President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory was affirmed by the Electoral College on Monday, despite President Trump’s relentless promotion of conspiracy theories and attacks on the integrity of the results.
Here are four takeaways on the longer-term effects of Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome, Mr. Biden’s victory and the future of the democratic process in the United States.
Biden wins. Again.
Mr. Biden defeated Mr. Trump by more than seven million votes, but the election wasn’t fully over until the Electoral College weighed in, and that took place on Monday. The question now is how Republicans who have refused to acknowledge the election outcome will respond to this unsurprising news.
Many, including Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, had argued that the race had simply been called by the news media, and not yet by the Electoral College. Such an argument is now, of course, far more difficult to make, and support for Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the results began to collapse among Senate Republicans Monday evening.
Democracy prevailed, but at a great price.
Democracy is fragile, and built upon public trust. And while the outcome of this year’s race has been affirmed, the acid messaging of Mr. Trump and his allies threatens to weaken the pillars of the institutions that run America’s elections.
“The greatest danger to America is the naïve belief that there is something unique that guarantees America will remain a democratic civil society,” Stuart Stevens, a longtime Republican strategist turned vocal Trump critic, said on Twitter. “Much of a major party has turned against democracy. It’s foolish to believe that doesn’t have consequences.”
There are some dissenters. Representative Paul Mitchell of Michigan, who is retiring and served in House Republican leadership, said on Monday that despite voting for Mr. Trump last month, he was quitting the party for the remainder of his term, turned off by the efforts to overturn the election.
“I believe that raw political considerations, not constitutional or voting integrity concerns, motivate many in party leadership to support the ‘stop the steal’ efforts, which is extremely disappointing to me,” he wrote in an open letter to party leaders.
The system survived the messy 2000 recount and two presidents elected in the 21st century despite them losing the popular vote. The great unknown is the cumulative impact of those past bouts and this year’s further erosion of democratic norms on the next inevitably close and contested election.
We learned what Electoral College meetings actually look like.
One of the many unusual things about this election was that Americans were able to see what is usually a postscript to Election Day. The proceedings were carried by live video streams or even on television, and the country could see the solemnity and ceremony that accompany the process. The appointment of the officers for the day. The distribution of the secret ballots. The wait for the official count.
Republicans are (still) resisting reality.
Inside the Georgia Capitol, while Democratic electors gathered in the State Senate to cast their votes, elsewhere in the Capitol, a group of Republicans gathered for a shadow ceremony, anointing their own slate of pro-Trump electors. David Shafer, the Georgia Republican Party chairman, explained the vote of the nonelectors as a bid to keep Mr. Trump’s legal options open.
The Republican goal posts for when the election will be fully decided keep moving. The latest circled date is Jan. 6, when Congress has its final say on the election. Some Trump allies are organizing a floor challenge to Mr. Biden’s victory.
