This Must Be Your First

On Tuesday, Gabriel Sterling, the Republican who serves as Georgia s voting-system implementation manager, appeared at a press conference. Voice shaking, he talked about how the home of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger his boss had been targeted after the president once again baselessly claimed that there was massive voter fraud in Georgia and called Raffensperger an enemy of the people. Sterling called on the president and the state s two Republicans senators to condemn threats of violence against election workers.

That scene itself was unsettling. But when, just a few hours later, Trump retweeted Sterling s plea with a shrug and a reassertion of his desire to steal the election, the situation turned profoundly frightening. Rigged Election, the president wrote. Show signatures and envelopes. Expose the massive voter fraud in Georgia. What is Secretary of State and @BrianKempGA afraid of. They know what we ll find!!!

via www.msn.com

It occurs to me as a sort of insight (!) that what we have here is coup v. coup. Sure, it might seem that Trump is trying to steal the election. From whom? From the people who, it might be argued, and more plausibly than I hope at least some of my literally dozens of readers would like to admit, stole it first. Perhaps the Supreme Court will step in and bless whatever the ultimate solution turns out to be with an aura of semi-legitimacy. But if that doesn’t happen, the US citizenry will correctly view the prize as going to the sneakiest, and that as either justified or not. I suspect this situation is not unprecedented historically, but it’s new to me and I can’t say I like it.