2 minute read
On Trump’s Refusal to Concede: A Contrarian View
All too often, the commentary on Trump’s refusal to concede is as useless as third-grade math books in a quantum physics class. American pundits, politicians, and broadcast journalists have consistently missed the mark, particularly regarding Trump’s logic, mindset, and strategies. Indeed, the conventional wisdom is that he has no logic or strategies. And his recent, explicitly political, maneuvers have been dismissed and discounted in somewhat simplistic, psychological, and thus exceedingly misleading terms: zany, infantile, petulant, narcissistic, etc. I think this view is shortsighted, though. Neither narcissism nor petulance is mutually exclusive of ruthlessness, callousness, or despotism. Indeed, given the significance that postmodernists attach to nuance as an intellectual criterion, it is both curious and ironic that pundits and politicians tend to invoke parochial notions of psychology in their assessments of Trump’s political machinations. To better understand what’s happening, let’s use a sports analogy.
Imagine a championship Superbowl game. You have the ball. It’s fourth down with one yard to go, and it’s late in the fourth quarter. You’re seven points down, on the twenty yard line, in the enemy’s territory—and you have the finest defense in the world. What do you do? Kick a field goal? Especially when you need a touchdown? In other words, do you give the ball back to the other team? Or do you go for broke and bank on your defense? Of course, many people would point out the faulty nature of my analogy—and rightly so. Trump lost according to the rules.
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Nonetheless, my larger point is that, in the current moment, given today’s political climate, Trump has very little to lose and almost everything to gain. Though he faces significant legal jeopardy without his presidency, there’s no indication that he will face penalties—legal, financial, or otherwise—for refusing to concede. The most likely fallout, it seems, is that his supporters will be more fiercely impassioned, more intensely outraged, and more thoroughly hoodwicked by Trumpism. In which case, they’ll even be more likely to disregard Joe Biden’s legitimacy as President and more likely to do Trump’s evil bidding in the form of violence, intimidation, and more. On the other hand, even if the odds aren’t especially favorable, and I’m not sure they aren’t, he might still manage to orchestrate a coup and win the Holy Grail—which is to say, the political power, economic privilege, and (extra) legal protection generally afforded to dictators.
It may seem counterintuitive, but Trump and other GOP politicians are playing the “long game” against a cadre of centrists who assumed the mantle of the left while banishing genuine radicals to the peanut gallery where their lucid commentaries on the right couldn’t be heard. Thus Trump has nearly everything to gain and virtually nothing to lose. I believe this is the logic that best explains our current situation.
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