Smile! We Live in the Least-Bad Timeline, Amazingly Enough
For those people who are understandably freaking out about the ongoing chaos regarding the apparently inevitable government shutdown, the strange reemergence of the debt ceiling as a political weapon, Trumpian saber-rattling about prosecuting and harassing Liz Cheney and others, and of course the unexpected front-and-center position that Elon Musk has seized in US politics, I have one thing to say: This is the best reality that we could be living in right now.
Why? There is perhaps nothing new to say here, but it bears repeating again and again that if Donald Trump had not become "Mr. 49.8" and won the presidency via the weird election system that the United States uses -- a system that we must always remember is "legal but corrupted" in ways large and small -- the country would be on an entirely different level of chaos right now.
Earlier this week, the electors in each state cast their votes without incident, and those votes will be officially counted and certified on January 6, 2025, in a ceremony over which Vice President Kamala Harris will preside. Two weeks later, Trump will become President at noon (which will be true even if he never takes the oath of office, although he will).
If Trump had lost the presidential election -- no matter how decisively -- where would we be? There would have been 45 days and counting of utter madness, loads of lawsuits and appeals (which would have changed the content of Dorf on Law, among other important things), most likely some violence in the streets, and on and on. There would also have been a lot more Ted Cruz. There surely would have been competing slates of electors again showing up at statehouses when those votes were recorded earlier this week. Security at the Capitol would make the Korean Demilitarized Zone look like a garden party.
The country would, in short, be nowhere near resolving who would be the next President of the United States. (As I note at the end of this paragraph, there is no doubt that the Trumpists’ coup would ultimately have succeeded, but nobody would be willing to admit as much in mid-December, and for good reason.) Over the last four years, I predicted again and again that Trump's election results would essentially mirror his 2020 results, although I did occasionally note that he could win "cleanly." Never did I predict that anyone other than Trump would end up as President in 2025, however, because TrumpWorld had clearly figured out the cheat codes for the US's deeply flawed constitutional/statutory mess that governs the country's elections and their resolutions.
We are, therefore, in that strange place where we are experiencing the "good" timeline, one in which the country is not riven by two and a half months of existential threats and insanity. Yes, there is all of the current terribleness, as well as distractions -- probably benign, though maybe not -- like Trump's claim that Canada should become the 51st state (not a popular idea up here in Toronto). Pundits and politicians continue to say stupid things about the election, with even some Democrats buying into the idea that they lost "badly" or that Harris was at fault for various 20-20 hindsight errors of omission and commission. People and organizations by the day continue to fall into line and show that they are more interested in profits or power than anything resembling principles or decency.
But once again, despite all of that, it is useful to remind ourselves that this is the calm version of American/global reality, compared to the alternative. The terrible things that will happen once Trump is back in power were going to happen either way, so 2024's surprising and frustrating election outcome is in a profound way also the most humane -- or, to continue using more accurate negative phrasing, the least inhumane -- path that history could have taken.
That, in any event, is my own least-bad attempt at summoning up some of that ol' holiday spirit: Cheer up, it could have been even worse! Along with the rest of the Dorf on Law team, I will be back in 2025 (and possibly before then, if something extremely time-sensitive happens in the meantime). And with that, I wish all Dorf on Law readers a peaceful end to 2024.