Those of you who know me know that I’ve moved on from polls in early 2016 when all but two (Trafalgar and People’s Pundit Daily—now Big Data Poll) were proven wrong. Never going back.
You also know that using other measures, namely the same ones that allowed me in early 2016 to predict a Trump electoral college victory of “300-320 electoral votes” (final was 306), I think President Donald Trump is headed for a decisive win. No victory can be called a “landslide” without the states of California, New York, and Illinois, which Trump won’t get. But he’ll come in with over 320 electoral votes this time, maybe closer to 350 depending on how terrible Joe Biden is and how many riots there are between now and November 3.
So, this column is about what happens when, not if, the Democrats lose on Nov. 3. What can we expect? Do the Democrats know they are going to lose?
I think so. First, you can see it in their desperation of stoking race riots, burning cities, and aggressive thugism on steroids. These are not the actions of a group of people who think they will be in power in just five months. Second, you see it in the warnings they are subtly giving Democrat politicians, such as the heads-up that the black vote isn’t as monolithic as it was, or that their party’s enthusiasm is really low (catatonic is probably a better description), or that masses of students won’t be around in the fall to be herded to vote.
Some might interpret the fact that Joe Biden continues to hide in his basement as a sign they are winning. I think it’s just the opposite. It smacks of desperation to keep him from contaminating the House and Senate races, which could collapse at any minute. The fact is, it isn’t just Black Lives Matter, fascist so-called Antifa, and “progressives” who are angry, but the whole country—but for different reasons and at different people. There are very large numbers of people in Democrat locked-down states who are seething at their governors and representatives (who mindlessly support the lockdowns). This is seen both in the endorsement of President Trump by the New York Police Union and the numbers of small businesses facing extinction if they don’t do something quick about the lunatic lockdowns. People are angry—angry at mayors, angry at governors—but few except the far-leftist cranks are angry at President Trump.
Basement Biden is being kept sequestered for a reason. The “consensus” is that he will say something stupid and blow his lead. To the contrary, I think they have known he would lose for months and are now in total defense mode over losing the House: they know that Biden can still flip a number of House seats. While I’m not confident the House has flipped yet, we are daily inching toward a GOP takeover, and it may well be there by November.
What then, is the plan when Biden loses?
It has become obvious that the first goal is to create chaos through “vote by mail” (VBM) and the delays it will bring in counting, especially if Republicans challenge many of the ballots as fraudulent. We have evidence from the primaries, where hundreds of thousands of ballots either went missing, came in late, or arrived without an outside signature and were declared ineligible. In the California primary, more than 102,000 ballots were disqualified, almost double from the 2016 primary. 
Wisconsin’s primary saw 20,000 rejected ballots. Florida officials dumped over 18,000 ballots (1.3%). In short, VBM has become a nightmare as President Trump has warned.
Sidebar: that said, the energy with which Trump has gone after VBM raises red flags with me. He knows that whatever he says or whichever position he takes will be opposed automatically by the Democrats. Sure enough, they have gone whole-hog on VBM. A small voice inside me said he was counting on that, knows he will win VBM (as Republicans did in WI07) and is sandbagging the Democrats once again. This is still, however, a very, very small voice.
One thought is that the Democrats’ goal is not to “steal the election” through VBM, but rather to so significantly delay the results in enough states that it compromises the Electoral College, either by denying President Trump an outright victory or by preventing a quorum. On that, thanks to “Freeper” AuH2ORepublican, “the 12th Amendment provides that "The person having the greatest Number of votes for President shall be the President if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed,” which could be interpreted one of two ways: with the denominator including only the number of electors actually appointed (in other words, excluding the electors from states that didn’t meet the deadline) or with the denominator including all electors that the Constitution requires be appointed (in other words, 538 irrespective of whether some states did not submit their electoral votes on time).” Such an interpretation, he warned, could result in a president being elected with virtually a handful of electoral votes.
For that reason, AuH2ORepublican argues and I agree that if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes, the election would get thrown into the House. There, the House would choose from the top three electoral vote recipients . . . but there is a catch. The House must vote by state delegation, not by member. A majority of delegations are required to elect a president and the Republicans have 26 delegations to the Democrats 24. There is little likelihood that this number would change in the election. As for the Vice President, that race is handed over to the Senate, which chooses between the top two remaining electoral vote recipients with “a majority of the whole number of senators” being required to elect the vice president (and the sitting vice president cannot break a tie). Thus, it could be “possible” for the House delegations to affirm President Trump won and yet the Senate (with defections from Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and one other) to install either Biden or Kamela Harris as the veep!
Therefore, if Biden is leading Trump among the electoral votes submitted on time, Democrats will insist that the denominator should not be 538 but the number of electors actually appointed as of the deadline. And if the Democrats control the House and Senate as of January 3, they will argue that Biden was elected by the electoral college despite not getting to 270 and the whole thing would end up in a very unreliable Supreme Court.
The good news in this scenario is that the states most likely to have “trouble” counting or experience delays will be Democratic states—New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and California. But three states have Democrat governors that Trump won in 2016, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. If they had “trouble” counting it might be a problem. Fortunately, a court in the state of Pennsylvania has ruled that all that state’s ballots must be counted by Nov. 6. In sum, if the election is at all close in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and they have delays in counting, this could get ugly.
As part of the delay strategy, therefore, the perpetual loser Hillary Clinton has weighed in, urging Joe Biden “not to concede under any circumstances.” I guess that would include a national blowout.
Thus, the “calls” on election night will be as important as ever. Watch for the networks, including the recently anti-Trump Fox, to withhold calls on states Trump has clearly won, delay calls as long as possible, and in general, lend credibility to the notion that “we don’t know” who won the election.
This is their post-loss plan. Because, I think, they are already preparing for a massive defeat.
Larry Schweikart is the co-author with Michael Allen of the New York Times #1 bestseller, A Patriot’s History of the United States, author of Reagan: The American President, and founder of the Wild World of History, a history curriculum website for high schoolers complete with curricula that have teacher guides, student workbooks, tests, maps/graphs, and over a dozen video lessons with each course (www.wildworldofhistory.com)
