Democrats are waiting out Trump’s ’temper tantrum,’ but there may be long-term consequences of the GOP’s election subversion

• For the last three weeks, President Donald Trump has attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential race and Democrats have attempted to characterize his efforts as a sideshow. 
• Democrats’ strategy of using public pressure seems to be working so far. The president announced on Monday evening that he’d allow “initial protocols” for the transition to begin. 
• But Trump’s refusal to concede may be doing real, long-term damage to Americans’ faith in democracy and could heighten pressure on Biden’s administration to hold the president accountable for alleged law-breaking.
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For the last three weeks, President Donald Trump has attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election. For months before that, he claimed that he would win unless a second term was stolen from him by voter fraud. 

Democrats have treated Trump and his Republican allies’ campaign to subvert the will of American voters as an extreme case of a presidential “temper tantrum,” as Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff put it recently. Or the unhinged last gasps of a “psychopathic nut,” as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trump last week. They’ve attempted to downplay it as a sideshow that will ultimately fail in its goal of changing the election outcome. 

Ever since major news outlets called the presidential race more than two weeks ago, President-elect Joe Biden and Democratic Congressional leaders have focused their messaging on the escalating pandemic and economic crisis. Biden has thrown himself into his unofficial transition process, meeting with public health advisers and rolling out cabinet and staff appointees. 

Some on the left called on Biden and Democratic leadership to sue Emily Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, for refusing to not only recognize Biden’s victory but also begin the formal transition process. Biden has been blocked from accessing national intelligence and moving forward with his pandemic response and administration staffing. But his team was reluctant to consider legal action, which some believe would legitimize Trump’s efforts. Instead, they just waited for Murphy to cave. 

The strategy of using public pressure and simply letting events play out has worked so far. After Michigan certified its election results on Monday and several prominent GOP lawmakers began calling for the formal transition to begin, Murphy informed Biden that she would acknowledge him as the apparent winner, release government funds, and allow the transition team to work directly with Trump administration officials on the handover. 

While Murphy said she reached her delayed decision "independently," Trump claimed he recommended that she and his aides begin "initial protocols" for the transition.  

But even as Trump attempted to take credit for doing what he said was "in the best interest of our Country," the president continued to contest the election results.

"Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good fight, and I believe we will prevail!" he tweeted. 

Trump doubled down on his refusal to concede the election several hours later, tweeting that his team is "moving full speed ahead" on its various lawsuits, again falsely claiming that this year's election was "the most corrupt election in American political history." 

A new precedent for the GOP

Democrats are confident that Trump will eventually be forced to concede and leave office, even if he's dragged from the Oval Office by Navy SEALS, as former President Barack Obama joked. 

There's a broad consensus among Democrats that the party should stay focused on handling the pandemic and crafting a stimulus deal — and worry about Trump's campaign to undermine faith in American democracy later. 

"Democrats have already won the election and won the debate about who was elected, so the focus now needs to be on how we're going to govern the country," Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who served as a spokesman for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, told Business Insider. "This isn't about norms and processes. This is about national security and pandemic spread."

But Trump's refusal to concede may be doing real, long-term damage to people's faith in democracy — not to mention endangering election officials in battleground states whose voting systems Trump has baselessly smeared. The president has likely convinced millions of his supporters that the American electoral system is corrupt and critics warn that he may be setting a new precedent for Republicans to continue challenging elections they lose. 

"Everyone smirking about the clownishness on display is missing that this is establishing a precedent for what you can get away with. The next times won't be like this," Spencer Ackerman, a national security reporter for the Daily Beast, tweeted. "Trump built on a very long legacy to get here and this is the next milestone." 

While the GOP establishment and most elected Republicans have publicly stood by Trump's attempts to subvert the election results, some Republicans are actively engaged in their own such schemes. 

John James, a Michigan Republican who lost his bid for Senate against incumbent Sen. Gary Peters by 85,000 votes, has refused to concede and made baseless allegations of voter fraud. This week, he set up a joint legal fund with the Republican National Committee that can accept major donations purportedly to be used for his legal battles.  

Ferguson said that, in the long term, Democrats will have to counter the disinformation Trump and his allies are spreading through social media and right-wing platforms. The party should deliver its message through channels outside of traditional media, which so many Americans now distrust, he added. 

"Trump is telling people that the Earth is flat — the only thing you can do is show people that they can circumnavigate the globe," Ferguson said. 

But some Democrats are optimistic that the president's end-stage anti-democratic behavior will encourage Biden's Justice Department to investigate and prosecute Trump on a host of charges. 

"The current attempt to break our democracy is just a symptom and an outgrowth of a larger set of criminal law-breaking and breaking of norms that Trump has engaged in," Adam Green, co-founder of the left-wing advocacy group Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told Business Insider. "One unintended consequence of Trump doing this last-ditch attempt to break democratic norms is he is keeping the well so poisoned that Biden's people might have more willingness to engage in criminal prosecution of him and his associates."