In my book, Breaking Big Money’s Grip on America, I wrote that America is at “a crossroads comparable to the one before the Civil War.” That was over five years ago. Before Donald Trump’s lawless, racist, divisive first term as president. Before our country had lost more than 200,000 lives, and counting, in a worldwide pandemic. Before the current economic crash caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs and thousands of businesses to close forever. Before a vandalized Postal Service and a resurgent effort to suppress votes. And, before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death triggered the current Supreme Court nomination battle.

It’s mind-boggling to say the least! And, yet, we should prepare for it getting even more maddening, cause it very well could according to Barton Gellman in The Atlantic.

I was going to write this week’s blog on how Mitch McConnell’s decision to rush another conservative justice onto the Supreme Court would test the Democrats ability to finally stand up for our democracy and restructure a more representative government, assuming they win the White House and the Senate in November.

But then, I read the soon-to-be published cover story of the November edition of The Atlantic entitled, The Election That Could Break America, and realizedI was putting the cart before the horse. Right now, all of our focus must be on the election itself, not what might come afterward.

In his must-read piece in The Atlantic, Barton Gellman, a three-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, writes:

“According to sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly. The longer Trump succeeds in keeping the vote count in doubt, the more pressure legislators will feel to act before the safe-harbor deadline expires.”[1]

It can’t be any clearer: Trump plans to win re-election by whatever means necessary. And we need to do whatever it takes to stop him and his Republican enablers.

Gellman suggests “…voting in person after all. More than half a million postal votes were rejected in this year’s primaries, even without Trump trying to suppress them.”[2]

As I advocated in my blog last week, “The best way to avoid this disastrous outcome (of a Trump victory) is for as many Biden supporters as possible to vote early in-person, not by mail. The Democrats need to be winning or at least be very close to a majority on election night, which will make it more difficult, if not impossible, for Trump to claim victory.”[3]

So, vote early in-person, and make sure to urge all your friends, family and colleagues to vote early in-person as well, especially those who live in battleground states.

Bruce Berlin, J.D.

A retired, public sector ethics attorney, Berlin is the author of Breaking Big Money’s Grip on America (See breakingbigmoneysgrip.com.), the founder of New Mexicans for Money Out of Politics, a former U.S. Institute of Peace fellow, and the founder and former executive director of The Trinity Forum for International Security and Conflict Resolution. He can be reached at breakingbigmoneysgrip@gmail.com.

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[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=cr&utm_campaign=oct-cover-actives-digital&utm_content=20200923&silverid-ref=NjI4MjU2NjM2OTI4S0.

[2] Ibid.

[3] https://breakingbigmoneysgrip.com/my-blog-3/.