Politics

Here’s why another attempt by Trump to overturn the election will fail

Published

1 year ago

November 11, 2024

Here’s why another attempt by Trump to overturn the election will fail

An underestimated factor in 2024 is that, while former President Donald Trump and his closest allies have learned from their failed 2020 coup attempt, everyone else learned, too.

On the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, I wrote out ways to protect American democracy in anticipation of another attempt in 2024. I’m pleased to say most of them happened.

Voters around the country rejected the “election denier” conspiracy theorists who ran for election administration positions. Congress reformed the Electoral Count Act, addressing loopholes Trump and congressional Republicans tried to exploit on Jan. 6. Big defamation payments for Dominion voting systems, as well as Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, give right-wing media a financial disincentive against pushing blatant lies.

Voters around the country rejected the ‘election denier’ conspiracy theorists who ran for election administration positions.

The legal system didn’t prevent Trump from getting this chance to put himself above the law, but the Justice Department did successfully prosecute hundreds of Jan. 6 attackers. Some of the most dangerous, such as militia members convicted of seditious conspiracy, are in prison. They can’t attack this time, and they offer an example for others: Trump can pardon insurrectionists if he becomes president, but you’re in trouble if he doesn’t.

The Republican Party has purged officials who won’t at least go along with Trump’s “big lie” and primed its supporters to deny election results, hammering lies about fraud. And this time they’ll have Elon Musk’s X pumping out conspiracy theories and trying to stoke political violence, as he recently did in the U.K.

In the event Trump loses, some degree of violence is likely as Trump and MAGA media whip their followers into a frenzy, but law enforcement will be more prepared. And he isn’t president, so he probably can’t summon a crowd to the National Mall in Washington and facilitate violence by ordering metal detectors removed.

Trump Supporters Hold — President Donald Trump arrives at the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images, file

There are bigger concerns at the state level. Some MAGA election administration officials will reject votes they don’t like or otherwise try to manipulate the process. We could see another fake electors scheme or state legislatures’ claiming they can overrule their voters.

But 2020 fake electors failed and got indicted, with the first conviction coming this August. To succeed this time, they’d need their states’ governors and a majority in Congress, both of which are unlikely. Even this Trump-authoritarianism-sympathetic Supreme Court rejected claims of state legislative supremacy.

A more vulnerable point is vote counting, especially in swing states where it could take days. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin can’t start processing mail-in ballots until Election Day, and Republican-led state legislatures rejected requests for reform. Trump could try to exploit any delays, declaring victory based on partial counts.

But 2020 was a better environment for that scam. Mail-in ballots had a heavy Democratic lean because Democrats took Covid more seriously than Republicans, and Trump was lying about mail-ins as a pretext to challenge the vote. This year, Republicans are encouraging early and mail-in voting. And whatever happens, an army of lawyers is ready to fight it out in court.

The biggest risk is if the election comes down to a single state, which limits the changes Trump would need, increasing incentives to attempt disruption.

There’s a risk of violent demonstrations at vote-counting centers. But areas that experienced threatening crowds last time are more prepared. For example, Maricopa County — which includes Phoenix and over half of Arizona’s population — will protect counting centers with drone surveillance and police snipers. “Election workers,” The Wall Street Journal reports, “have gone through active-shooter drills and learned to barricade themselves or wield fire hoses to repel armed mobs.”

Other swing states should increase security at vote-counting centers, if they haven’t already. Especially in populous areas that will take longer to count, such as in and around Philadelphia.

The biggest risk is if the election comes down to a single state, which limits the changes Trump would need, increasing incentives to attempt disruption. But it would draw immense national attention from all sides, with lawyers, political operatives, protesters and media descending on the state.

Election administration is diffuse and multilayered, and a lot is on camera. More judges and election officials want to uphold the law than overthrow it. We may not know the winner on Election Night, but we’ll almost certainly get an accurate count and a certified winner in time.

Trump’s lying about election results and trying to overthrow democracy with the backing of the institutional Republican Party is the positive scenario. That would sound shockingly bad to an American in 2015, but in 2024 it’s much better than the alternative.

If he wins, all bets are off. But if he loses, we can take some solace in that it’ll be harder for him and his team to try to steal the election this time around.

Nicholas Grossman

Nicholas Grossman is a political science professor at the University of Illinois, editor of Arc Digital and the author of “Drones and Terrorism.”

Politics

2028 Dem veteran? Uncle Sam wants you.

Published

9 hours ago

March 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

In the 15 days since President Donald Trump launched Operation Epic Fury on Iran, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) is approaching nearly a dozen media appearances, offering his often visceral reaction to the conflict.

Gallego, a 46-year-old combat veteran who deployed to Iraq as an infantryman in 2005, has emerged as a blunt, clear voice for the Democratic Party on foreign policy, speaking as someone whose own generation experienced the forever wars.

There he was on BLN’s “The Source with Kaitlin Collins” saying Secretary of State Marco Rubio was doing “CYA” and noting that the “MAGA base is pissed.” There he was sitting down with the AP speaking “as someone who lives with PTSD,” adding “it’s not been an easy week.” And there he was on Derek Thompson’s podcast, speaking about “going town to town searching for insurgents” 21 years ago, “but there was no clear direction of what victory looked like, what the end goal was, what was going to be the after-action report on Iraq.”

Gallego isn’t alone. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a Navy captain who flew combat missions during Operation Desert Storm in 1990, has also racked up a run of high-profile media appearances, as has former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a U.S. Navy Reserve intelligence officer who deployed to Afghanistan. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who served in Afghanistan in the Army’s 82nd Airborne, went on local radio this week to link Americans’ affordability woes to the war.

In a year after many Democrats pined for a metaphorical fighter, the party is now having a conversation with itself about whether it needs a literal fighter — a veteran who can speak with credibility on issues of war and national security.

In an interview with Blue Light News, Gallego spoke of “dodging bullets, IEDs, RPGs, clearing towns and then coming back to the same towns with insurgents” and of “losing friends and still not understanding what the end goal was the whole time.”

“It leaves a mark on you, and you start seeing it happening again, you know, you don’t really think about the politics,” Gallego said. “You think about the people who are going to be potentially dying. And that’s why I think I was not hesitant to speak my mind on that.”

Later this month in San Antonio, Texas, Gallego will join VoteVets Action for its third town hall featuring potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidates, promising “fresh voices to the national conversation — those who have worn the uniform and served alongside us, who connect with everyday Americans others can’t,” according to a promotional video. (They’ve also done town halls with Buttigieg and Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin.)

“On foreign policy, the Dems need a candidate who is seen as strong/tough — not in rhetoric or bravado political platitudes but who conveys a sense of judgement and resolve with which voters connect instinctively,” said Doug Wilson, the former assistant secretary of Defense for Public Affairs during the Obama administration and co-lead of Buttigieg’s 2020 foreign policy team.

The “Iran war underscores the need” for such a candidate, Wilson added.

Whomever the Democrats select as their nominee could potentially face a Situation Room-steeped ticket deep with national security credentials, including a Marine Iraq war veteran in Vice President JD Vance or Rubio, with his secretary of State experience.

Depending on how the many conflicts the U.S. is engaged in at the moment resolve, that experience could cut against them.

But right now, Democrats who can match those bona fides have some currency others without them can’t.

“That’s obviously going to be helpful to them,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left think tank Third Way. “It’s gonna be a big part of what they’re talking about for the next little while. But you know, how long does it last? We just don’t know, right? In my professional lifetime, foreign policy stuff and national security has mattered in a presidential race once — in 2004. That’s it. Otherwise, it comes up, but it’s not driving the conversation.”

Some potential Democratic candidates without such credentials have still managed to break through amid the Iran news cycle. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) has said the White House has treated aspects of the war “as a video game,” in a clip gaining traction on X. “When American service members killed in action are returning to the United States in flagged-draped coffins, and even more Americans have lost limbs or suffered terrible brain injuries or are fighting for their lives, this White House treats war like a game, and it’s a disgrace,” Ossoff said.

When asked whether military service is an essential for the party’s eventual nominee, Gallego acknowledged there is a benefit for someone who can “speak with that type of credibility.”

“I’m not the type of person that’s like, ‘you have to be a veteran — Iraq War veteran,’” Gallego said. “This is a democracy. We’re still one, and there’s a lot of people that can bring valuable experience and knowledge. But you know, someone that actually has a nuanced understanding of foreign policy; that doesn’t go to the total knee-jerk reactionism that sometimes we see where we go to the point of, you know, isolationism; or the other way, where we go to full neocon. There needs to be a very balanced way to how we approach the world.”

Like this content? Consider signing up for Blue Light News’s Playbook newsletter.