TheEconomistNovember 21st 2020 231“S
top the steal” has become the an-
them of outraged Republicans who
believe President Donald Trump’s claims
that Democrats stole his re-election by
committing massive voter fraud. It is the
hashtag they rally around online and the
slogan they chant when they throng in the
streets, as they did on November 14th in
Washington, dc, earning a laudatory
drive-by from the presidential motorcade.
But this is not the first time surrogates
of Mr Trump have deployed it. Roger Stone,
a former adviser to the president who re-
cently had his prison sentence for several
convictions commuted, actually founded a
group by that name in April 2016—then to
expose Senator Ted Cruz’s purported plot to
steal the Republican nomination. Similar
pre-emptive claims of voter fraud were
made before the general-election contest
with Hillary Clinton in 2016. Now that Mr
Trump has actually lost, the slogan has fi-
nally been deployed in earnest.
Mr Trump has a long-held aversion to
admitting defeat, or really conceding anyfault at all. That is now throwing up an un-
precedented scenario: an incumbent
American president refusing to hand over
power due to baseless claims of electoral
fraud. It is a serious democratic norm to
trample over—one easy to underplay be-
cause of public confidence that other insti-
tutions, like the courts and the military,
will not accede to Mr Trump’s wishes. The
chances of a reversed decision are low. The
lawsuits filed in the swing states that MrTrump lost are floundering. Despite Mr
Trump’s recent replacement of civilian
leadership at the Department of Defence,
there is little risk of a self-coup.
Even if this low-energy autogolpedoes
not succeed, Mr Trump’s actions are still
alarming. Presidential transitions involve
a large number of civil servants: some
4,000, are politically appointed, with 1,200
requiring confirmation by the Senate. By
not conceding, Mr Trump has stalled this
process. Mr Biden is not receiving his clas-
sified presidential daily briefings. His team
does not have access to secure governmen-
tal communications, relying instead on
encrypted messaging apps. The commis-
sion to study the 9/11 attacks found that the
shortened transition in 2000, caused by
the disputed result in Florida, may have
contributed to American vulnerability to
terrorist attacks. By contrast, the well-
managed transition between George W.
Bush and Barack Obama in the midst of the
global financial crisis enabled faster im-
plementation of economic relief. Asked
what was at stake this time, Mr Biden said
“more people may die” if the Trump ad-
ministration refused to co-ordinate on vi-
rus suppression and vaccine distribution.
The stalled transition is also a test for
the president’s party. Never-Trump Repub-
licans had hoped the president would be
dealt a stinging electoral rebuke, forcing a
reckoning among accommodationist party
grandees. That did not happen. Down-bal-The White HouseTo the bitter end
WASHINGTON, DC
President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede is harming AmericaUnited States
24 Missiledefence
25 CharlesKoch’schangeofheart
25 Thefutureofdiplomacy
26 CorruptionintheMidwest
27 African-Americancemeteries
27 Charterschoolsandcovid-19
28 Lexington: Audacious and obstructedAlso in this section