Christopher Pyne: Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud through postal votes are hogwash
Trump’s raving and ranting will not undo last week’s calm and well run election, Christopher Pyne writes.
Opinion
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I don’t want to gloat. There’s no room for it. I just feel an overwhelming sense of relief that Donald Trump has been defeated.
While he will rant and rave and make claims that would be laughable if they weren’t so serious, he will not be able to undo the election last Tuesday in the United States of America. Regardless of the fears of good people everywhere, there is no evidence of his claims of widespread voting fraud.
The Supreme Courts of the states where the Trump campaign has lodged legal action against the result are unlikely to find in favour of conspiracies.
The Federal Supreme Court, with its eye on its own place in history, will not uphold ludicrous claims in order to keep Trump in power. Supreme Court justices are appointed for life for good reason – so that they can be independent.
One of the myths that Trump is peddling is that Democrat-controlled states are fraudulently altering the results in their states to elect Joe Biden.
How does that fit with the fact that in Georgia, where Trump appears to have lost to Biden, the governor is a Republican and in Pennsylvania, another close result which Biden has won, the state legislature is controlled by the Republicans? It doesn’t, because it’s nonsense.
In fact, having observed US elections my whole life, this one appears to have been remarkably calm and well run.
The more sinister myth being touted by Trump is that votes cast by post, or at polling places before election day and counted after election day, are somehow invalid or illegal. That’s hogwash.
In Australia, we accept postal votes up to two weeks after election day as long as they are postmarked before election day. We count and sometimes recount ballots for weeks. The Trump camp knew that he would win a majority of the ballots cast on election day because commentators and analysts had been writing for weeks that the pre-election day voting was the highest in their history, and that Democrats were three times more likely to vote pre-election than Republicans. They had been setting the scene for Trump to claim victory and dispute the result for a long time.
As for my predictions last week, I was on the money that Biden would flip Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
I wrote that he would “most likely” shift Arizona and North Carolina. I got that half right. I wrote that he had an outside chance in Ohio and Iowa – wrong. I didn’t pick Georgia.
The Democrats will keep control of the House of Representatives and the Senate will be status quo – 50 per cent right. Biden will win the popular vote by over four million – almost everyone got that right.
I’m not a stockbroker, so you can check this advice with your financial adviser, but I wouldn’t be rushing out to invest in a polling company right now! Once again, they were wrong. Maybe voters are just over being polled? It wouldn’t surprise me.
Trump surprised pundits. I’m sure the left of the Democratic Party made many voters nervous and to be fair, before the coronavirus pandemic, Trump had done a good job with the US economy. Both of those factors held the Republican vote together.
The Republicans did better in the Senate and the House of Representatives than expected. They gained some districts in some states. They outperformed Trump on some of those local ballots.
That offers a glimmer of hope to the Republicans.
It means Trump was the problem not the Republican Party itself. Who would be surprised, beside the Trump family? Trump isn’t the Republican Party.
He is his own brand. Against Hillary Clinton he was more competitive than against Biden. Biden is a centrist Democrat – a moderate. Whereas Trump positioned Clinton as being on the left of the political spectrum, he found that harder to do with the known quantity that is Biden.
Now it will be critical for Biden to govern from the centre and keep a weather eye on the Democrat left. What America and the world needs now is a grip on the rudder of the good ship USA that steers a consistent, reliable and predictable course.
In the next four years, it’s time for the Republicans to take back their party and banish the interlopers that have traduced the legacy of Ronald Reagan, the George Bushes, John McCain and countless others. The good news is that despite the blue wave not materialising but the red haze appearing and then fading, I don’t have to tuck into that generous serving of grandma’s humble pie for which so many readers might have been hoping to buy tickets to see!
Oh, and if you see any besuited executive types sporting Joe Biden caps in the Central Business District this week, it’s because I am collecting on my bets!
