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Donald Trump's Empty Bluster Reveals a Narcissist Who Can't Fathom Defeat
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/donald_trumps_empty_blustering_reveals_n
arcissist_fathom_defeat_20161025/
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Posted on Oct 25, 2016
By Bill Blum
Evan Vucci / AP
The highlight of the third and, thankfully, final presidential debate last
Wednesday came roughly at the midway
point(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/19/the-final-tr
ump-clinton-debate-transcript-annotated/) , when Donald Trump refused to say
that he would accept the results of November's election.
Since then, Trump has doubled down on his position, declaring he would
accept the outcome only if he wins and invoking the example of the contested
presidential vote in 2000 to reinforce his right not to concede. His
rationale-articulated with increasing vigor as his poll numbers have
plummeted-is that the vote is "rigged" as a result of electoral
irregularities.
Like most of the loathsome rhetoric he's spewed since announcing his
candidacy(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/06/16/do
nald-trump-to-announce-his-presidential-plans-today/ ) back in June 2015,
Trump's pre-emptive refusal to recognize the election's outcome is an
incendiary mix of personal pathology and magical thinking, racism and
xenophobia, facts and legal distortion.
In a
column(http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_psychopathology_of_donald_tru
mp_20160731) published in July, I discussed the Republican
standard-bearer's personality, as analyzed by several leading mental-health
experts who have followed his career closely. Their view is that Trump is a
malignant narcissist-that he suffers from a well-defined psychological
disorder marked by an exaggerated sense of self-importance and entitlement,
an overinflated belief in the quality of his achievements and talent, a
preoccupation with fantasies about success and power, and a lack of empathy
for others.
As a narcissist, Trump cannot countenance actual defeat or even the
possibility of losing in an election that hasn't happened yet. His signature
axiom is that he's a "winner." Hence, if he fails, it must be the fault of a
rigged system-and the deceit and/or stupidity of those responsible for his
undoing.
The scapegoats in Trump's confabulated thinking include not only powerful
forces such as the mainstream media and the Clinton campaign but also some
of the nation's most vulnerable populations, particularly black and Hispanic
voters. Such voters, he has
charged(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/us/politics/donald-trump-voting-el
ection-rigging.html) -with allusions to inner-city neighborhoods in
Philadelphia and elsewhere-will cast multiple ballots with fake or no
identification documents. Illegal aliens, he's
added(http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/trump-immigrants-pouring-over-bo
rder-to-vote-229274) , will beat a path en masse to polling booths around
the country, while hordes of dead
people(http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-predicts-dead-people-wont
-vote-for-him) who have not been purged from voting rolls somehow will
manage to resurrect themselves and pull their levers or punch their chads
for Hillary.
In reality, of course, in-person voter-identification fraud virtually is
nonexistent. A comprehensive 2014 study conducted by professor Justin Levitt
of Loyola Law School Los Angeles found only 31
incidents(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehen
sive-investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of
-one-billion-ballots-cast/) of polling-place ID impersonation anywhere in
the country since 2000.
The total number of ballots cast nationwide, in general and primary
elections during the 14-year period Levitt reviewed, exceeded 1 billion. The
Bush administration reached similar findings regarding the incidence of
in-person fraud in a five-year Justice Department
probe(http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html) completed
in 2007.
Much the same can be said for postmortem balloting. Dead men don't wear
plaid, as comedian Steve Martin taught us in one of his funniest
movies(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083798/) , and they don't vote, either.
Nor do the living impersonate the dead in order to cast ballots, at least in
any appreciable numbers.
As Levitt concluded in another
study(http://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/The%20Truth%20
About%20Voter%20Fraud.pdf) , this one funded by the Brennan Center for
Justice based in New York City, nearly all allegations of dead people voting
have stemmed from mismatched death records and voter rolls, with ballots
cast by living individuals whose names matched or were similar to the names
of people who had passed away.
Nonetheless, millions of Trump supporters have bought into their leader's
lunacy. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released last Friday, only
half(http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll-rigging-idUSKCN12L2
O2) of Republicans are prepared to accept Clinton as their commander in
chief if she is elected. Worse, nearly 70 percent of GOP respondents
indicated that a Clinton victory would come about because of illegal voting
or vote rigging.
It would be a different situation if Trump had decided to take up the mantle
of Bernie Sanders and educate the nation about the many ways our electoral
process actually is rigged. But he hasn't-and he can't-because he's part of
the very rigging he condemns.
Although he's long fulminated in public about the stranglehold big-money
donors have on other, less-wealthy candidates, Trump has been an active
fundraiser in his own
right((http://time.com/4373124/donald-trump-donors-super-pacs/) . According
to the Washington
Post,(https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/campaig
n-finance/?tid=a_inl) through the end of September the Trump campaign, its
affiliated committees and super PACs had amassed a war chest of $712
million-less than the $1.1 billion raised by and on behalf of Clinton but
still a staggering sum.
The reason the system is rigged, as Sanders told us time and again
throughout the primaries, is that our campaign-finance laws have opened the
floodgates to corruption. Fueled by growing economic inequality and a series
of pro-corporate Supreme Court decisions, beginning with Buckley v.
Valeo(https://www.oyez.org/cases/1975/75-436) in 1976 and extending to
Citizens United v. FEC(https://www.oyez.org/cases/2008/08-205) in 2010 and
McCutcheon v. FEC(https://www.oyez.org/cases/2013/12-536) in 2014, money
dominates our electoral process as never before, at both the state and
national levels. The oligarchy wields undue influence-whether in the form of
billionaire candidates like Trump or billionaire surrogates like Clinton.
At the same time, with its 2013 ruling in Shelby County v.
Holder(https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-96) , the Supreme Court has gutted
the Voting Rights Act, accelerating already-existing suppression techniques
such as voter ID, racial gerrymandering and restrictions on early voting and
same-day registration.
Far from telling the truth about such tactics, Trump has been a fervent
advocate for them. In an August rally in North Carolina, a state with
arguably the most onerous record of suppression in the aftermath of the
Shelby case, Trump told
supporters(http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/donald-trump-voter-id-law-f
raud-226832) that without voter ID, fraud would be rampant and people would
head to the polls "15 times" for Clinton.
Fortunately, Trump's threat not to concede electoral defeat is empty.
Although the loser in American presidential elections typically concedes as
soon as the results are clear, there is no legal requirement mandating
formal capitulation.
Nor is there any legal basis for demanding a national recount of the vote.
As we were reminded in 2000, when Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore
outpolled the Republican George W. Bush, the popular vote doesn't determine
the outcome of presidential elections.
Under Article II, Section
1(https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii) of the Constitution,
the presidency is determined by the vote of the states' representatives to
the Electoral College. The candidate receiving the highest number of
electoral votes becomes the president, as tallied in a joint session of
Congress in January.
The Electoral Count Act of 1887, as subsequently amended over the
decades(https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/15) , gives the states 35
days (known as the "safe-harbor" period) after the presidential election to
certify their respective slates of electors to Congress. Any challenges to
the selection of electors or to popular vote counts must be made at the
state level-and resolved within the safe-harbor time frame for each state's
electors to be recognized by Congress.
What threw the 2000 presidential election into doubt was the razor-thin
margin of the popular vote count in Florida, which then had 25 electoral
votes. Given the overall closeness of the national race between Gore and
Bush, the winner of Florida would carry the Electoral College and gain the
presidency.
After the election, Gore filed suit in Florida to contest its certification
of the election in Bush's favor. The state's supreme court ordered a
recount. But before the recount could be completed, the U.S. Supreme Court
stepped in and halted the process, effectively giving Florida to the GOP in
its notorious Bush v. Gore decision(https://www.oyez.org/cases/2000/00-949)
. As a result of the court's ruling, Bush
won(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000)
the Electoral College by a score of 271-266 (with one abstention).
The only way Trump realistically could hope to mimic the litigation and
delays of 2000 would be for him to challenge the results in a state in which
the popular vote was uncertain and whose electoral votes would be decisive
in the overall Electoral College totals. The chances of that happening,
however, are slim to none-and growing dimmer with the release of each new
opinion poll.
Unless lightning strikes and the ground shakes, Trump's political career is
drawing to an embarrassing close. Progressives should bid him a fond
farewell, even as they gear up to face off against the Clinton
administration and whatever new demagogue comes along to fill Trump's shoes
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