Win or Lose, Trump Shows His Unfitness

Win or Lose, Trump Shows His Unfitness

The president’s grossly irresponsible claims aside, the only thing to do now is wait for votes to be counted.

By Jonathan Bernstein, an hour ago

Stop talking.

Photographer: Mandel Ngan/AFP

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As I write this, some eight states still haven’t been called for president, and millions of regular, lawful ballots haven’t been counted. President Donald Trump nevertheless falsely claimed early Wednesday morning that he has won re-election — and that all the states where he was currently trailing would eventually be his once the ballots were counted, whereas all the states in which he was currently leading were obviously victories for him and that the Supreme Court should cut off the counts, thanks to what he falsely called “fraud” without even a hint of evidence.

In other words, win or lose, Trump has demonstrated once again that he is fully unfit for the office that he seeks to hold for a second term.

Of course, Trump’s words have no legal importance whatsoever. He doesn’t get to decide who wins and whose votes get to be counted. In fact, it’s quite possible that his wild accusations may backfire. Several Republican politicians who back the president, along with several Fox News on-air hosts, criticized him immediately. So, of course, did Democrats and the “neutral” media. Obviously, that doesn’t affect the basic math as the tabulation continues to accumulate — and it’s still quite likely that there will be a clear winner once all the votes are counted. But it’s not impossible that it could affect what happens in the courts, or even (gulp) if Congress winds up having to sort it all out.

What happened in congressional elections is a bit clearer. Republicans have an excellent chance of retaining their Senate majority even if Joe Biden wins the presidency, although there are several uncalled races, and at least one runoff election coming in Georgia. On the House side, Republicans did much better than expected, but Democrats easily retained their majority. That means we’re most likely headed for at least two more years of divided-party government.

But I’ll just repeat what I said earlier on Bloomberg’s live blog: We’re all just going to have to wait for the votes to be counted. No matter how many times Trump falsely says that there’s something wrong with that.

(I’m afraid I have no links today. Links will resume tomorrow — and maybe we’ll even have a presidential result to discuss by then.)