‘Weird’ Republican campaign for presidency not as weird as it seems

Weirdos? Republican candidates Donald Trump and J.D. Vance at a campaign rally, July 20, 2024, in Grand Rapids, Mich. They expect to be in the White House whether they win the election or not. | Evan Vucci / AP

Democrats up and down the line have been telling voters for the past two weeks that Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and the Republicans are just too “weird” to be trusted with high office. The Republicans are doing things, we hear, that make no sense if they really want to win votes.

With Vance, they point to his railing against Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and others for being “cat ladies” who are childless and “miserable” at running their own lives, let alone be trusted with political leadership. Democratic spokespeople say it’s an example of how the GOP seems to prefer crazy talk to campaigning to expand its base.

With Trump, Democrats point to his seemingly strange predictions that if people vote for him this time they will never have to vote again or his recent remarks at a rally that he didn’t really need his supporters to come out and vote. They mention also Trump’s bizarre obsession with sharks and the fictional cannibal Hannibal Lecter.

Republican lawmakers say the supposed “weirdness” of their candidate is evidence of nothing more than “Trump just being Trump.” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said, “All this is only their way of saying that if you elect them, the nightmare we are experiencing will end.”

But really, what serious candidates would talk the way Trump and Vance are talking?

The answer is that if you are planning to gain the White House by staging a coup rather than by winning an election, it does not matter whether you pile up the necessary votes.

The reality is that Republicans are plotting out multiple pathways to subvert any election result that doesn’t favor them, and sometimes they let the truth slip out about their schemes.

Something else Trump has said, for instance, is even more worrisome than his prediction that elections will end in the future. He told his supporters at a campaign rally earlier in the week that he had more than enough votes and that he didn’t need any additional votes to win. His supporters, he said, didn’t even have to worry about getting out to vote for him.

That was indeed a weird thing for a candidate for the highest office in the land to say, unless, of course, he knows something that most of us don’t. The evidence is that he knows about the plans that are already in place to get him into the White House without his needing to actually win the election.

A Rolling Stone magazine report on Monday points out that Republicans have already appointed 70 election deniers into top spots on local county election boards in each of the swing states. The plan is for those election-denying officials to refuse to certify the votes in their counties if Kamala Harris wins. That, of course, could prevent the states involved from certifying their votes if there is a statewide Harris victory.

Respected constitutional lawyer and voting rights activist, Mark Elias said Monday day on MSNBC that the threat is real, and he warned everyone to “expect an unprecedented mass movement by local Republican officials to refuse to certify election results.” He told Rolling Stone, “It will be worse than ever.”

Not mentioned by Rolling Stone is that the GOP plan also involves delays by the Republican House Majority Leader in certifying the victories of Democrats elected to the House so that he will still have a Republican majority to do whatever is needed should Trump lose.

When the time comes in January, with enough GOP votes to withhold certification of a Harris victory if she wins, the House itself will then decide the election. With all the uncertified totals from the swing states ignored, a GOP Congress could then install Trump as president. This would be guaranteed because each state gets the same vote, regardless of size or population, and there are more Republican-led states than Democratic ones.

So, as Trump said at his rally, probably with confidence, “I don’t need your votes.” The MAGA plotters are determined not to fail at stealing the election like they did when trying to keep Trump in the White House after his 2020 loss.

The “weirdness” we see in the Trump campaign is not just amusing, as many GOP lawmakers would have us believe. It is a signal that something very bad is being cooked up to serve to the American people.

It means the vote to save democracy and the vote for Harris cannot be just enough to win but that the people’s movements must aim for a landslide that buries the GOP plotters.

Noted presidential historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat said on MSNBC that it is clear that there is a grave threat to freedom underway and that “if Trump gets into the White House, he will never leave.”

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said, “The way I look at this is that everyone has a job to do here. We have to turn out an enormous vote, one that overwhelms the Republicans. Let’s bring out everyone to protect democracy.”

Already, if the rapid takeoff of the Harris campaign is any indication, the people are on their way to stopping the second Republican coup attempt. Labor and all its allies are a major part of this historic fight.

Ben-Ghiat warned, “When tyrants like Trump tell you that they will be dictators and that they will eliminate elections, take them at their word.

“Trump telling backers that voting will be eliminated in the future and the news that election deniers are taking over county election boards,” she said, “should be the top stories on the front pages of every newspaper in America.”

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CONTRIBUTOR

John Wojcik

John Wojcik is Editor-in-Chief of People's World. He joined the staff as Labor Editor in May 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There, he served as a shop steward and a member of a UFCW contract negotiating committee. In the 1970s and '80s, he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, this newspaper's predecessor, and was active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York.