Stress-testing democracy

The US Presidential Elections is turning into a big circus, actually a ripe plot for a prime-time drama.

Voters have decided that President-elect Joe Biden should guide the country through the next four years. But President Donald Trump and top administration officials are doing what they can to make changing direction more difficult.

Ever since Biden won with an overwhelming majority, Trump has spent the days hunkered down in the White House, raging about a “stolen” election and refusing to accept the reality of his loss. But in other ways he is acting as if he knows he will be departing soon and showing none of the deference that presidents traditionally give their successors in their final days in office.

Trump has so far refused to concede the election. Despite growing pressure from Republicans on Sunday to drop his chaotic, last-ditch fight to overturn the US presidential election, instead, his team is focusing on several long-shot legal challenges, pressuring state officials to prevent them certifying results and, and where they are able, pursuing recounts.

Trump’s legal team has suffered repeated blows in recent days, with a federal judge on Saturday excoriating a bid to stop the certification of votes in Pennsylvania, where Biden leads by more than 80,000 votes. Legal attempts to prevent the certification of results have also failed in Georgia, Michigan and Arizona. The president and other plaintiffs filed notice of appeal to that decision on Sunday. Experts say Trump’s chances of overturning the election results are increasingly slim, if non-existent, given Biden’s current Electoral College lead. The president would need a series of unprecedented vote overturns in several states to come within striking distance.

Biden will announce the first of his Cabinet appointments on Tuesday and is planning for a scaled-down inauguration due to the coronavirus pandemic, as he lays the foundation for his new administration despite President Trump’s refusal to concede, at any cost. Of his many odious acts, President Trump’s desperate attempt to cling to power by stress-testing American democracy will be his most reprehensible legacy.