I must admit, I find myself more irritated at Team Trump's shenanigans than I expected I would be, because it really isn't playing out the way I expected.
I expected Trump and Friends to demand recounts anywhere they could, and the partial recounts in Wisconsin make perfect sense to me. I expected them to try to throw out as many votes as possible, on the flimsiest of technicalities. While that is somewhat anti-democratic, it pays lip service to the law. It's a complete pretense to insist that you respect the law so much that you think you have to throw out a ballot because it wasn't dated, but I would have to grudgingly admit that if the law says the ballot must be dated, it's fair to throw it out if not dated. I expected all those things, and though I dreaded the possible result of that sort of strict adherence to the letter of the law, I would not be able to come up with a good argument for doing anything else.
But that's not what they are doing. The tactics I expected would not be enough, and they know it, so they are just trying to find any possible excuse for disregarding perfectly legal votes. Their lawsuits are so ridiculous that they are making a mockery of the law. They aren't looking for any way they can to eke out some sort of advantage by exploiting a corner of the law here and there. They are just simply putting up something that has the form of a legal complaint, hoping to find a biased judge who will go along with it because he wants their guy to stay in power, and will twist the law into a pretzel to make it happen. Or, perhaps, they don't even want that. Perhaps winning isn't even their goal. Perhaps they're just trolling, or possibly hoping to cast doubt on our institutions and our government, and subverting our legal system for assistance.
It's disgraceful. It's disgraceful that Trump is doing it, directly or via his cronies, and it is disgraceful that so many Republicans are willing to go along with it. At least I am proud of the ones who refuse, like the Georgia Secretary of State, or the Michigan legislators who apparently were not persuaded by Trump's pitch. Congressman Kelly of Pennsylvania, on the other hand, deserves to be tarred and feathered for his role in a lawsuit attempting to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians.
It's a sad time for America.
