1. Lawsuits have failed and will continue to fail<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Lawsuits challenging the results of the presidential election \u201chave been failing and will continue to fail,\u201d say Baughman, an associate professor whose focus is on U.S. politics, including Congress, elections, political parties, and political participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2. The challenge to the election is based on \u2018a grift and a con\u2019<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
By challenging the election, Baughman suggests that Trump and his followers are engaged in \u201ca grift and a con.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The grift: The Trump administration is using their fight against the results to fundraise for his campaign and the Republican National Committee<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The con is of Trump\u2019s base, \u201cturning their disappointment into anger that can be used to mobilize for the Senate special elections in Georgia and to mobilize toward the next rounds of federal elections in 2022 and 2024.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyone who played schoolyard games as a kid knows that once the rules aren\u2019t followed, the game disintegrates. And that\u2019s what can happen if Trump continues his shenanigans, says Baughman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Challenging the election and refusing to concede is a \u201cdangerous game, not in terms of the current election but how it threatens confidence in our democratic and electoral institutions. This is where the lasting harm is likely to come \u2014 erosion in the electoral processes, fueling dismissal of President Biden as the rightfully elected president. And once we lose that kind of faith in political institutions it’s going to take a lot of work to get it back.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Further, calling into question election results also threatens to \u201cdismiss political institutions broadly as a legitimate venue for resolving disputes. And that confidence is not something that comes back very easily, either, because it becomes very easy to blame the institution or the process for any disappointing outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if confidence in electoral institutions erodes, \u201cthat would also have downstream effects for bipartisan efforts within Congress, if members of either party do not think that they can legitimately pursue their plans with the other party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In recent history, presidential administrations typically approached immigration from the perspective of reform, says Clarisa P\u00e9rez-Armend\u00e1riz, an associate professor whose focus includes Latinx politics, Latin American politics, and immigration politics and policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cReform was the starting line, the goal being to create a path toward <\/em>citizenship for the undocumented,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the Trump administration\u2019s approach has been to \u201cramp up immigration restrictions across the board, including restrictions on refugee resettlement; asylum seekers; immigrant and nonimmigrant visas; citizenship applications; and the path toward citizenship for undocumented citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, on average in the decade before Trump, we saw about 98,000 refugees resettled per year. Under the Trump administration, the average has been 15,000. \u201cAnd we’ve seen a 50 percent drop in legal migration between 2016 and 2019 due to policies like the Muslim ban<\/a>, major new restrictions on visas for high-skilled workers<\/a>, and restrictions on students.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Biden can take executive action on some immigration issues, like stopping the funding for the Mexico\u2013U.S. wall<\/a>, stopping family separation, and restoring funding for DACA processing<\/a>, \u201cthe Biden administration will have its hands full just getting us to where we were before Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n P\u00e9rez-Armend\u00e1riz notes that some say the \u201csingle most important thing Biden can do is to appoint someone to the Department of Homeland Security who restores the value and belief that we\u2019re a country of immigrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut that actually might be harder than people expect. It\u2019s very sad for me to even hear myself say that this is what we\u2019re aiming for.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n At some point, the discourse around abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will run headlong into centrist, across-the-aisle policy efforts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBiden can take steps to make ICE more accountable, but there will be people for whom even the prospect of another Trump, Donald Trump Jr., in the next election, won\u2019t make them willing to take a middle ground and give up their goal to abolish ICE,\u201d P\u00e9rez-Armend\u00e1riz says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m in one of those rare positions where I can say something like, \u2018Trump\u2019s foreign policy is a disaster,\u2019 and it will not be a partisan issue,\u201d says Richter, a professor who teaches international relations, environmental politics, public memory, and the politics of Eastern Europe and Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Richter points to the boatload of elected and appointed Republican leaders with foreign-policy cred who have gone public with major criticisms of the president\u2019s foreign policy<\/a>. \u201cSo let me say it: \u2018Trump\u2019s foreign policy was a disaster,\u2019\u201d says Richter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the Great Depression, the U.S. approach to foreign policy has been to help strengthen overseas industrial economies to the extent it could, counting on them as trading partners to safeguard the U.S. economy against another Depression and threats to its democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat the Trump administration has done is to decrease other countries’ trust in the U.S. to do the right thing under any circumstances.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cPeople disagree on how wonderful our approach has been for everybody, but for the industrialized world it has worked pretty well, and it has been the consensus of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment since 1945. It\u2019s a good one and it protects U.S. interests.\u201d The approach also includes mutual protection agreements through NATO and with Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In four years, says Richter, \u201cTrump has really destroyed a lot of that \u2014 or at least diminished it. I was in the Czech Republic last year, and you can see fears. If you go to Germany, the fears are even greater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat the Trump administration has done is to decrease other countries\u2019 trust that U.S. institutions work and decrease trust in the U.S. to do the right thing under any circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clearly, says Richter, Biden would want to recreate that decades-long foreign-policy consensus, and he can do some things, like restore funding to the World Health Organization and rejoin the Paris Agreement. \u201cThat should not be a problem. But restoring the trust he can\u2019t do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Richter\u2019s colleagues point out, achieving other goals, such as rebuilding the state department or rebuilding the intelligence community, \u201cwill be difficult and take a long time, due to the political realities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJust to get back to where the U.S. was will take a long time. And the U.S. will always be in a weaker position than it once was \u2014 because it\u2019s harder to rebuild something than to tear it down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Richter says that \u201cwe are not in a position to lead like we were in the 1990s, when the U.S. represented 25 percent or more of greenhouse-gas emissions. Now it\u2019s 15 percent, and China has 30 percent<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n China is growing fast and India wants to grow fast. In India, coal is the most easily accessible and cheapest form of energy for development. \u201cIt\u2019s there, it\u2019s cheap to get at, and they\u2019re going to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe U.S.\u2019s fate in terms of climate change is not in U.S. hands. It belongs in the hands of people in Beijing, in New Delhi, in Brasilia, as well as the U.S. and Brussels and places like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe United States can\u2019t force those countries; we\u2019ll have to try to negotiate and that\u2019s going to cost a lot of money, which I think will be very difficult to do politically and nearly impossible given Trump America-first ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA lot of Democrats were hoping this election would be like the 1932 landslide,\u201d a repudiation of the Republican Party that saw Franklin Roosevelt win 42 of 48 states,\u201d says Alyssa Maraj Grahame, a visiting assistant professor who focuses on political economy, work, crisis politics and the financial sector. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut it\u2019’s become quite clear that it\u2019s nothing close to that. Democrats should see the outcome of this election, at least as we currently understand it, as a reprieve, not a victory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Typically, economic policy debates assume that Americans\u2019 preferences fall along a \u201ctraditional left-right ideological access, and that most Americans are pretty close to the middle,\u201d says Grahame. \u201cThe parties then compete for those voters and pull them one way or another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But based on 2020 election results, Grahame sees a \u201cdisconnect between the parties\u2019 economic platforms and what American voters seem to actually want, and how they vote when these kinds of questions show up on ballot initiatives.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The big example is in Florida, where voters approved amending the state constitution to increase the minimum wage from $8.56 to $15 by 2026<\/a>. Approval had a high bar: 60 percent had to say yes, and 60.8 percent did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Trump also won Florida by 3 percent. \u201cA minimum wage increase is not on the Republican agenda, and the Miami-Dade Republican Party officially opposed that amendment proposal,\u201d says Grahame. \u201cSo, why would Florida vote to increase its minimum wage to $15 and also vote for Trump?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For now, it\u2019s too soon to answer the question, \u201cbut I think we can say that probably at least 10 percent of the Florida electorate said \u2018yes\u2019 on Amendment 2 while also voting for Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a clue about why Florida voters might vote Trump and the minimum wage increase, Grahame says to look at the country\u2019s growing economic inequality, which has increased \u201csince the 2008 financial crisis to levels not seen since the Gilded Age. We know that this sort of degree of inequality is politically destabilizing, and that’s something to watch out for.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an unstable environment, \u201cTrump has been really quite adept at mobilizing anger and resentment, especially in rural areas that are experiencing economic decline,\u201d Grahame says. \u201cHe’s also really good at getting people to identify the deprivation they’re experiencing with Republican Party\u2019s responses.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Biden was probably among the best-suited Democratic candidates to speak to rural voters. But his running mate, Kamala Harris? \u201cNot so much,\u201d says Grahame. \u201cShe\u2019s very much like a coastal elite. That was also a major shortcoming of the Democrats\u2019 2016 ticket, which basically comprised two coastal elites.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Voters in coal-mining areas who were worried about losing their jobs have been more receptive to responses from Trump than from Democrats.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In terms of Democrats\u2019 failure to communicate with rural Americans, \u201cmaybe it\u2019s not so much messaging but packaging,\u201d Grahame says. \u201cMaybe they lack concreteness in what proposals mean for people, say, in coal-producing regions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, Grahame suggests that voters in coal-mining areas who were worried about losing their jobs have been more receptive to responses from Trump than from Democrats, even if those responses haven\u2019t delivered any results<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But when one looks at Democratic policies from the perspective of a coal worker, \u201cit\u2019s not really clear what the transition [away from coal] means<\/em> for people in those places,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis pandemic and economic downturn has made the question of an unimaginable future much more real for a much wider swath of Americans. Until Democrats can answer their questions in a concrete and compelling way, they’re really going to struggle<\/a> in rural parts of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Engel, who focuses on constitutional law, U.S. political and democratic development, and LGBTQ politics, teed up a question from a fellow scholar and friend, Tom Pepinsky, a comparative politics specialist at Cornell who focuses on democratic decline in Southeast Asian politics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Pepinsky has asked<\/a>, \u201cHave political scientists been too pessimistic\u201d about U.S. politics and democratic institutions? Are they, in fact, more resilient, and is the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris proof of that resiliency? For Pepinsky, the question was rhetorical: Yes, he says, \u201cbut we still do not have a good way to know how strong America\u2019s political institutions are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before giving his own answer to the question, Engel said that \u201cwe need to define what we mean by democracy.\u201d And he gave a very simple definition of \u201cwhat is sometimes called \u2018procedural\u2019 or \u2018minimalist\u2019 democracy: a system that has a non-violent procedure, usually in an election, by which a government is formed and is perceived by the public as legitimate and on that basis passes law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, how did the U.S. fare in terms of that definition? Noting that some Bates colleagues have called him \u201cEeyore\u201d because he is not \u201cdispositionally an optimist,\u201d Engel started with what looks good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe just went through a successful election, and in the midst of a public health crisis, more people voted than ever before. And the litigation that is being brought forward is not considered serious. This achievement is not something to downplay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still…<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think the Trump administration\u2019s current refusal to concede the election is a threat to democratic sustainability precisely because this refusal undermines even a most minimalist definition of democracy,\u201d said Engel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI worry that we waver on the precipice of a very serious problem. President Trump\u2019s refusal to concede has diminished the capacity of resources to go to the transition and the time needed for transition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think the Trump administration is doing exactly what Steve Bannon told them to do: \u2018Flood the zone with shit<\/a>\u2019 to confuse everyone.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe’ve seen a roiling in the Department of Defense. Lindsey Graham wants the Senate to investigate all mail in-ballots<\/a>. And some have noted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo behaved in a way I could only call unprofessional \u2014 or perhaps just too cute \u2014 by insisting that \u2018we will have a smooth transition to a second Trump administration<\/a>.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll these actions contribute to the development of an idea that somehow the election was illegitimate, despite all evidence to the contrary. This contributes to tearing down the most basic, minimalist, proceduralist definition of a functional democracy: namely that we\u2019ve gone through a successful nonviolent process that has yielded a legitimate outcome that we can trust.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Engel doesn\u2019t believe those are \u201csubstantive threats,\u201d and does believe that \u201ccome Jan. 20 Biden will be inaugurated \u2014 I don’t think that there’s going to be a slow-motion coup.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still….<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Moderator](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/03\/180228_Dunlap_3135.jpg\")
3. Challenging the results of elections is a \u2018dangerous game\u2019<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
4. Trump’s restrictive approach to immigration will be hard to undo.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
![\"Associate](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/02\/200226_Clarisa_Perez_Amendariz_Thesis_Meetings_0168.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/11\/master-pnp-ggbain-50400-50437u.jpg\")
5. Turning the “Abolish ICE” discourse into policy will be a challenge for the Democrats<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
6. We can agree (can\u2019t we?) on one thing: Trump\u2019s foreign policy was a….<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
![\"Professor](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/04\/190424_James_Richter_0056.jpg\")
7. The U.S. is not in a position to be a leader in combating climate change<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
8. For Democrats, the election is a reprieve, not a victory<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
9. The parties need to rethink how they talk to voters about the economy<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/11\/AMG-Head-shot-607x900.jpg\")
10. The Biden-Harris ticket didn\u2019t effectively speak to rural consciousness<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
11. The current post-election path might prove an existential threat to U.S. democracy<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
![\"2018](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/11\/180406_Stephen_Engel_Classroom_0261-900x600.jpg\")