The classic transgression

Sidney Blumenthal says Trump’s struggles will be NO USE.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe sent a team to view the American election, a routine exercise they have performed nine previous times. But this time they were shocked by what they observed. “Nobody – no politician, no elected official, nobody – should limit the people’s right to vote,” said Michael Georg Link, a member of the German parliament who led the group. “Baseless allegations of systematic deficiencies, notably by the incumbent president, including on election night, harm public trust in democratic institutions.”

This was his last chance to shame us.

Apart from the next few weeks, which is another bad holdover from the 18th century, but he’s going to face a lot less compliance now that his underlings hope to save some shreds of a future in DC.

Trump’s actions to stop or suspend the counting of votes and to certify the results is precisely the classic transgression for which the US has rebuked tinpot dictators, including in the state department’s annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. Trump’s call specifically flies in the face of Article 23 (b) of the American Convention on Human Rights, of the Organization of American States, to which the US is a signatory, which guarantees the right “to vote and to be elected in genuine periodic elections, which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and by secret ballot that guarantees the free expression of the will of the voters”.

“…except in the case of Donald Trump.” That’s in there somewhere, isn’t it?

One after another, the states’ ballots will be counted. The results will be known. They will be certified. And Biden will be declared the winner. Trump’s attempt to crown himself king will be his last failed reality show. Instead, he will be the first president since Benjamin Harrison to have lost the popular vote for president twice, the first time paradoxically as the winner but the second as the natural loser. Trump will soon be, as the poet Wallace Stevens wrote, “the Emperor of Ice Cream”.

Hope so!

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