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How We (Narrowly) Avoided a Coup
The first thing I want to say is, hallelujah.
The second thing I want to say is, the danger is not completely past.
It appears that we have, mercifully, avoided the worst case scenario that many (myself included) have been screeching like howler monkeys about for months and even years: a defeated Donald Trump using the power of his office, the slavish devotion of his followers, the complicity of the right wing media, and other levers both subtle and violent, legal and illegal, to cling to the presidency, even if it meant plunging this country into a constitutional crisis, to include fighting in the streets.
He tried, but it didn’t happen. Joe Biden clearly won the election, beating him by almost four million votes and still counting, with a final Electoral College tally that figures to be 306–232…..exactly what Trump’s was four years ago (which he never tires of calling a “landslide.”) No serious institution, entity, or individual questions it, and all the mechanisms of power have shifted into action to begin the normal transition process. Even before the networks called it for Joe, Heather Cox Richardson informs us that “the Secret Service sent reinforcements to Wilmington, Delaware, to surround Biden in a protective bubble, in anticipation of….a victory speech,” and a national defense airspace was established over Biden’s Delaware…
