Thursday, November 05, 2020

Trump can't sue his way to victory

I've said this elsewhere, but as much as I was afraid of Trump's re-election being imposed by some court ruling à la Bush v. Gore, I don't see how that can work for Trump. The Supreme Court handed the presidency to Bush when it stopped the counting in Florida. At the time the count was stopped, Bush had a narrow, but possibly shrinking, lead. So by stopping the count with that narrow lead, Bush was declared winner of Florida, which pushed him over 270 in the electoral college.

The situation right now is totally different. If Judge's stop the count the remaining states, Biden wins. Biden is ahead in enough states to get to 270 and his margin keeps growing as the count continues. While Bush had a narrow but shrinking lead when the courts intervened, Trump has a narrow and growing deficit. Interrupting the voting will hurt him, it won't help him. Not only does he lack a plausible path to victory if all the votes are counted, he lacks one if the vote count is interrupted.

That said, I guess some of the hyper-partisan judges he stacked on the court could come up with some crazy ruling that might rescue Trump, but they would have to get really creative to do that. And I don't think there's any legal rule they could hang their ruling on.