ROGER KIMBALL: Save our Democracy! Trump presumably will fight it in court. But I think he should take a page from his own playbook and hold rallies the contested spots over the next couple of days.
I suspect that such Save Our Democracy rallies would attract tens of thousands of people, just as Trump’s campaign rallies did these past weeks. There is no way that Sleepy Joe Biden could compete with them. Not only would they dramatize the extent and enthusiasm of Trump’s support, they would also serve as a salutary reminder that Trump, unlike so many Republican politicians, is willing to fight to assure a free, open, and fair election. They would have the additional attraction of driving the Left even more beyond the pale than than they already are. It’s not nice to take pleasure in the sufferings of others, but I am willing to make an exception in the case of the anguish such rallies would cause among the people who have spent the last four years trying to destroy the president and anyone who came into his orbit.
Save Our Democracy! It has a ring to it. I hope team Trump will consider organizing a bunch of them now, today.
If Trump ends up losing*, those rallies would certainly keep his profile high in the media for whatever he chooses to do next, as Glenn recently wrote:
Trump was big on the national stage long before he was president. Why would he go away after the election is over? He’ll still have tens of millions of (probably angry) followers, deep pockets and a huge megaphone.
There has already been some talk of Trump starting his own television network to rival Fox News, and/or his own social media platform — the latter made more plausible by the heavy censorious hands of those running Twitter and Facebook — and I suspect that Trump would regard a 2020 loss as a setback, not a defeat. Grover Cleveland came back to win a second term after losing the White House, Trump might reason. Why not me? He’ll probably hold campaign-style rallies around the country starting right after the election.
Fox’s dismal performance last night would allow Trump TV to peel away a lot of viewers — and possibly a few of Fox’s hosts, as well.
* As Stephen Kruiser quipped in 2010, every Republican should assume that his election is well within the margin of ACORN.