Steve Schmidt, bless his pointy Republican head, makes a very important point here.
And to underscore the point, let me ask you this: How do we go from having an “election” to having a “president elect”?
The process is actually a bit subtle and somewhat more complicated than one might think. Election day happens, but there is no “president elect” in any official, constitutional, way, for a very long time thereafter.
Though this can vary, the first possible date that we will have a “president elect” in the current election cycle is on January 6th, 2017. Not before.
Of course, what really happens, is that the country’s news agencies, in an uncoordinated yet organically coordinated way, decide which of the states, and thus their electoral votes, goes to each candidate, and if they become certain at some point that 270 or more electoral votes will go to one of the candidates, then they declare that person the winner.
But, what really really happens, as pointed out as Steve Schmidt, is that the loser apparent of the election becomes the first person to address, usually by a phone call, the winner apparent. John McCain called up Barack Obama and called him “Mr. President.” Al Gore called up George Bush and called him “Mr. President.”
Watch the video to see what a former Republican looks like, and to get some interesting perspective on Trump’s claims that the election is being rigged. More importantly, listen to what Schmidt says about the importance of the apparent fact that Donald Trump has no intention of ever calling Hillary Clinton “Madam President.”
And that could be a problem.
Watch the whole thing:
The founding fathers were unwilling or unable to do two things. One was to see centuries into the future, and thus avoid certain ambiguities, missing elements, or general silliness in their founding father’s document, the Constitution of the United States of America. The other was to tie up certain details so that procedure was set in stone, as opposed to followed by somewhat flexible agreed upon convention.
If the Congress is a GOP congress, and they continue to act as they have been acting with respect to the Supreme Court nomination, when January 6th comes around, Donald Trump may well become the president. Or at least, they could try that.
And there would be a Civil War.
The first Civil War was fought over slavery. The second Civil War will be fought over racism and misogyny.