Llewellyn King: How Trump might sabotage the mid-term elections

WEST WARWICK, R.I.

After some long, dark months, there is an optimism afoot among Democrats, many independents, and a few old- school Republicans that the clouds will part and the sun will shine brightly again on Nov. 4.

Most votes in the midterms will be counted, and Democrats believe that the House will have flipped Democratic with a decent majority. They are daring to hope that the Senate, too, will be theirs.

The Trump presidency, its opponents hope, will be firmly marked “lame duck.” Better, they hope that the years of Trump raging, as they see it, outside of his constitutional authority and acting illegally will be over. 

It is fantasized that he will be trussed and restricted from authoritarian governance; that his claims of having a mandate will have been repudiated.

But Trump isn’t a man who takes reversal easily. So there is widespread fear that he will find some way of negating the results of the ballot on Nov. 3 and that Nov. 4 will see him crowing, declaring victory, and being more determined than ever to act as an authoritarian.

Two of the most revered and admired members of the hierarchy of the Democratic Party, Tim Wirth, who represented Colorado for 12 years in the House before entering the Senate, and Richard Gephardt, who represented Missouri for 26 years in the House and rose to become majority leader, have been studying the emergency powers they fear might be used to obstruct the midterms.

The Democratic graybeards state: “Over the past several months we have been examining the structure of presidential emergency authorities, particularly presidential emergency accurate action documents (PEADs) and related to continuity of government provisions. These authorities have existed for decades. What has changed is the context in which they might be used.”

It is these documents, and how they might be used with new intent by Trump and his allies, which alarms the senior Democrats.

They point out that the cadre of Trump loyalists that supported his lie that he won the 2020 election are seeking ways to overcome Democratic victory in the midterms.

Wirth and Gephardt state: “Actors involved in efforts to contest the 2020 election remain active and are again discussing the use of a national emergency to justify federal intervention in election administration. 

“At the same time, federal law enforcement has been used directly in relation to contested election processes, and the president has called for federal control over aspects of voting while describing domestic opponents in terms that go well beyond ordinary political language.”

Wirth and Gephardt wonder if “taken together” these developments raise the question of “whether emergency authorities of uncertain scope, capable of rapid implementation and subject to limited oversight, could be brought to bear in a domestic political context before Congress or the courts can respond effectively.”

Clearly the former members of Congress believe that the administration will find pretexts to either subvert the vote, challenge the result or set aside the entire election on emergency grounds.

The first moves are underway to limit mail-in voting, and not to count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day. The SAVE America Act before Congress would impose what its opponents say is excessive voter- identification requirements, including proof of citizenship, supposedly to prevent non-citizen voting. No evidence that this is a problem has been produced. 

Trump has added to uncertainty in one statement, suggesting that his administration is so successful that no election is needed. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt walked that back, but the intimation lingers.

My belief is that in no way will there be a smooth transfer of power if the Democrats win in the midterms, and that the full apparatus of emergency powers could be employed to negate the result.

The president has produced an extraordinary convulsion in the country, and it is unlikely to be corrected as easily as by the midterm elections. 

Trump, who can widely be inconsistent in what he says, even in the same speech, remains consistent in his lie that the 2020 election was fraudulent. No evidence of this has ever been found despite exhaustive investigations, but he remains firm on that allegation. 

He will at least make that assertion about the midterms result if it goes against him. 

Of course, a lot happens in a single month of the Trump administration, and there are seven months until the elections. 

What is certain is that if the Democrats triumph in the midterms, Trump will use every tool of the executive to frustrate the new Congress. A wild elephant is a dangerous creature when antagonized.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and an international energy-sector consultant. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com , and he’s based in Rhode Island.