When the race is over(?)

 The election season is about to cross the finish line, after what seemed to be ten years since spring. 

Although everyone who is rooting for Biden suffers from 2016's PTSD and Trump-supporters are eager to find hope anywhere, for someone following the polls only, this race has been a very boring and predictable one. Barring some bombshell revelation about Biden (and it's already too late for that), the end has never been in question for months. The only remaining unknown is the size of the victory. The really interesting and unpredictable part is just about to start.

If Biden wins, and there is almost no way he won't, Trump will claim that the election was rigged. The smaller the gap between him and Biden, the louder he will be. His followers will stage protests and he will encourage them. Furthermore, this will be a prolonged process. People will vote personally on November 3, but counting the mail-in-ballots can take days or even weeks. Republicans are more likely to vote in person, and Democrats are more likely than Republicans to vote early. If Trump has more votes on the evening of the election but the mail-in-ballots chip his advantage away day-by-day, he will tell his followers that the election is being stolen in front of their eyes. This will be a powder keg. But he will do it anyway, regardless of whether Biden is ahead from the beginning or not.

That's not news. The interesting new brain-teaser for political geeks is to try and predict how the GOP will react to its unhinged leader, who won't be the leader for long. On one hand, I suppose their enthusiasm to side with Trump will be inversely proportional to the size of defeat, too. On the other hand, that is where I expect high-profile Republicans to break ranks. Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, or Mike Pence don't like Trump. If anything, they despise him, and certainly don't want to go to prison with him (maybe Bill Barr wants, I don't know). I've read that Biden already reached out to moderate Republicans with cabinet position offers, which is exactly what he needs to do and the country needs badly. 

As a side-note, I'm astonished by how professionally the Democrats have led their campaign from the beginning. They had the discipline of playing it low-profile during the first wave of the pandemic. They kept Biden out of Trump's way of self-immolation and ran a campaign on the promise of uniting the country instead of falling prey to their own extremists. As opposed to the Trump-campaign, which was led by the idiot son-in-law and a bunch of monkeys who wouldn't make it to team B in any other political campaign. They have burnt an incredible amount of money for nothing and let their boss wasting time on holding politically harmful rallies as personal therapy sessions. Trump is partying like it's 2016, raging about Hillary's emails and Obama's spying on his campaign. Who the fuck cares about Hillary's emails in 2020? In the end, Donald Trump will go down in history, not as the raw political genius he is purported to be, but as a one-trick pony.

I digress, but I couldn't resist.

So I expect the Republican elders to distance themself from Trump, albeit silently. I hope they are every bit of the cynical, spineless, power-hungry people they have shown themselves to be. Because if they are, they will act solely out of self-interest and try to wash the stain off or keep silent until it fades. The situation is worse if they retained a shred of dignity because in that case they might cling to Trumpism instead of admitting their complete moral and political failure. Plus, they have also proved that they are not terrific long-term strategists.

There are several factors to complicate the picture even further. The most important of them may be that, unlike in 2016, Trump has reasons to be terrified of losing. Once the office of the presidency no longer protects him, he might need to face charges of tax evasion, obstruction of justice, and whatever additional misdeeds from the last five decades the prosecutors will uncover. Even during his presidency, half a dozen of his close associates were led away in handcuffs. The institutions worked. All this beside the fact that he might even be financially broken. So he will fight to the bitter end. And even if top-level Republicans are happy to throw him to the wolves, he has an almost inerodable base of supporters and even some low-level GOP lunatics who truly love him (in a Platonic way, most probably).

Then there is the Supreme Court. Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett have made some worrying noises lately. One would think that having reached the highest office they ever dreamed of, they will act with restraint and consideration, but what if they won't? The Trump team will immediately issue a series of legal challenges (which is almost the norm by an American election) and some of them might end up at the Supreme Court.

Then the Anti-anti Trumpers. There are mistakes made at every election. We can count on the National Review to find every single one of them that worked to Biden's advantage and, at most, passingly remark upon the others that favor Trump. By the way, the best comparison to Anti-anti-Trumpers just dawned upon me. They are like the tobacco industry. They only asked questions. They just pointed to scientific mistakes. They even set up their own research. These right-wing party soldiers will point out when the mainstream media doesn't pursue a story aggressively enough. They will report on any trace of Wokeness around Biden. On every gaffe. Everything is factual. We are just impassionate observers. But I digress again.

Then there are the Trump family's future plans. I'm sure Don Jr would love to capitalize on daddy's success in 2024. No one can tell how that will play out with the GOP leadership.

Then finally, the clay-footed giant, the voters. Will Trump-voters gradually lose interest in him after his presidential days are counted? I think that's inevitable, and the better question is where their energies will be channeled into.

The months until January will be tumultuous. The banging of the war drums won't stop. Will the game of "I was only there to control his worse instincts" start right after the elections? Will Trump be a lonesome madman till January, raging on Twitter, ignored by everyone? (Or will the GOP stick with him and go fully down the path of becoming the white grievance party of the future?) Will Trump have any incentive to do something in the next 2 months? Or just trying to save his hide? Or screwing up things just out of spite? 

Things are going to get interesting after November 3.