What the commentators said
Trump’s refusal to concede is dragging America onto “unfamiliar terrain”, said Joshua Chaffin in the FT. Yet the president’s tactics are entirely consistent with those he deployed in the 3,500 or so lawsuits he fought during his 30 years as a property mogul: never admit defeat; sue with a series of “bombastic claims”; seek to benefit from the “resulting chaos”. So far, it’s not going well for him, said Laurence H. Tribe in The Guardian: nine of his campaign team’s cases were dropped or lost on Friday alone, and his lawsuits concern so few ballots they couldn’t overturn Biden’s lead even if he won them all. Recounts in Wisconsin and Georgia (which Biden won by 20,000 and 14,000 votes respectively) could not alter the result. “The largest recount swing in history – Florida’s recount in 2000 – changed only 1,247 votes.” It’s hard to know what Trump’s up to, said Gerard Baker in The Times. My bet is he’s after a moral victory, paving the way for a fresh tilt at the presidency in 2024 as “the man who never really lost”.
In the meantime, Trump is blocking the transition in “unprecedented ways”, said Anita Kumar on Politico. There are no briefings being given on Covid (which is killing over 1,000 Americans a day); on troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq ( see page 8); or on tensions with Iran and China. The big question now, said Sarah Baxter in The Sunday Times, is which Biden will show up when he is sworn in as president on 20 January – “the garrulous, somewhat comical figure” he sometimes presents, or the skilled operator who can win over Republican critics? He certainly has his work cut out, said Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian; even pre-Covid, the inequalities that propelled Trump to power were very much intact. The 477 densely populated counties won by Biden (to date) account for roughly 70% of the US economy. Trump’s base of 2,497 whiter, less-educated counties contributes just 29%. Tackling this disparity will take a whole lot more than the “kumbaya politics” of unity on which Biden campaigned.