We Kept the Republic...Barely
We had to win.
That isn't hyperbole. We had to win the 2020 election. The fate of our republic rested on Americans rising up and rejecting right-wing fascism. Had we lost, it would have been the end. With Donald Trump in charge, COVID-19 would continue to run rampant. Republican governors would keep their states open to appease Derp Fuhrer. The concerns of medical professionals would be ignored. Any potential vaccine distribution would be butchered with Trump at the helm. Red states would get excess amounts, blue states wouldn't get any. New restrictions would close our borders to brilliant foreigners from abroad and from inspiring asylum-seekers. DACA recipients would live in the perpetual fear of deportation. Whistleblowers would be persecuted by a Barr Justice Department. And the doofus-in-chief would always be one tweet away from launching the United States of America into a third world war.
With Tuesday night's events, there no longer exists any hope for Donald Trump to overturn the election. The Supremes ruled 9-0 not to hear the Pennsylvania case. Four days earlier, Joe Biden officially secured enough electors to become president. Fox News, after having lost the ratings game to Newsmax for the first time ever, is inching toward admitting that Cheeto Mussolini has zero chance left. Trump is 1-51 in post-election lawsuits and that 1 was a technicality that actually ensured that he lost Pennsylvania even sooner thanks to not allowing cured ballots after 3 days. Trump's cracked out, er, kraken team of fourth-rate judicial jarheads have becoming a laughingstock in legal circles, in the media, and in popular culture. You know it's bad when a COVID-19 diagnosis is the only positive news the president's best and brightest legal minds have gotten in over 5 weeks.
As grateful as we should all be that our legal system held off this cockamamie coup, what should not be lost is the extent to which Republicans went to to lie, cheat, and steal this election. The putrid post-election lawsuits are only failing so horribly because of the margins of victory of Joe Biden in the critical 5 states that he won. Had Biden won Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan by only a handful of votes, we would be in the fight for our lives right now. Literally. If we got to any sort of situation like the one that occurred in 2000 then there's zero chance Republicans don't do everything in their power to muck up the situation. I'm talking armed protests, (even more) election worker intimidation, and a full-on reich-wing media campaign to gin up an army of supporters to not take no for an answer. As peaceful as the 2020 Florida recount was, that level of peacefulness could never be replicated with Donald Trump and today's Republican Party.
But in addition to the margins at which Joe Biden won, we also should be relieved that Republican hubris got the best of them, specifically as it relates to Louis DeJoy's efforts to undermine the Post Office. By removing post office boxes and high-capacity sorters over the summer, DeJoy idiotically gave away the play 5 months before the big game. However, DeJoy was never confused for a Rhodes Scholar so the fact that a Trump-appointed donor can't even crime correctly should surprise none of us. Had DeJoy's shenanigans begun at the start of early voting in late September or October, we would have been in a world of hurt as there wouldn't have been time to properly adjust campaign outreach and organizing. Knowing the the GOP playbook was to try and limit mail-in voting, Democrats and democratic-leading organizations frequently stressed the need to return main-in ballots as soon as possible and stressed in-person ballot drop offs the week prior to the election.
In the end, the good guys won. However, we won because Republicans are equally evil and moronic. Competent fascists would have had a serious chance to overturn the will of the people through the Post Office and the court system. Yet, nobody will ever accuse the modern-day GOP of being smart. Being incompetent is, in fact, a requirement of being a Trump Republican. Fortunately for all of us, being incompetent is also what allowed us to maintain our republic. These aren't smart people and things got out of hand. Had they not been complete and utter morons, our country would be in a very different place right now and with four more years of Trump none of us might have survived.
Thank God for stupid people.