Allegations of election fraud becoming less specific and more general...

This is counterintuitive and reeks of desperation

Yesterday the President gave a speech which he called one of the most important speeches of his Presidency. The speech laid out what he sees as the issues with the 2020 election and to some degree problems with our election system in general. Now I think something like this could have been an effective use of the podium, if the focus was more on improving elections in general and less about 2020 and how it affected Trump himself.

It's extremely hard to tell if the President is still actually legitimately fighting this election in his own mind, or if he is given up and is just sort of releasing his frustrations. There are generally mixed signals going on in regards to the intent. But the less the President makes this about election integrity (which is a good argument) and the more he makes it about himself somehow pulling a rabbit out of the legal hat (chances of which are the classic slim and none, with slim being seen leaving the building), the less people will take heed and the more people will dismiss it. 

Perhaps the President is serious about making another run in 2024. I am not sure who could really challenge him within the Republican ranks. Certainly if Biden is not able to pick up the pieces of the post Covid reality, then the Republican could very well be a favorite in 2024. We have to remember that Trump still garnered eleven million more votes than in 2016, and was within 0.4, 0.4, and 0.2 percent in three states that would garnered him an electoral college victory. 

But to really position himself, he needs to draw the fine line between looking like a fighter who will exhaust his last legitimate means to contest, and looking like a guy who doesn't want to accept that he lost. I mean there is a fine line between fierce competitor and bad loser. Now granted, Trump passed that line for some by not conceding "before" the election. But he has also passed that line for many other reasonable Americans, and his actions grow increasingly hard to justify for even his most avid fans. 

To overturn an entire state would require very specific proof of election fraud that involved more votes that the winner won by. There is very little time to litigate, so you need much of your evidence up front. While this might not seem fair, it is what is is and it is the rules you must play by. There was a time early on when there appeared to be some specific evidence of fraud, but we have seemed to move beyond the specific (likely because it's hard to prove) and into the more generic concepts of the unconstitutional nature of mail in ballots and other temporary changes to election procedures. 

While I don't entirely discount that there are constitutional issues with Governors signing executive orders that alter election laws (because those are strictly against the constitution).  Mass mailings of ballots to people who didn't request them. Allowing for longer periods of time to accept ballots which seemed well out of line with any normal postal delivery need. Executive orders that rescinded the need for signature matches and other issues of security written into state laws. Much of this was done using Covid as cover. But if someone can tell me why Covid would have anything to do with signing a ballot or someone matching a signature, then you are way smarter than I. 

But the time to litigate that was back when the orders were signed. Many were. These were obvious constitutional issues and even more obvious bending of rules and laws that had nothing to do with Covid. I would offer that if not for the feckless nature of the Chief Justice who allowed many things to stand on a 4-4 basis, that the court could have prevented much of the nonsense we are going through right now. No question that many of these actions would not have passed muster had we had the full court we have today.

But now is not the time to relitigate. It's one thing to try to prevent a state from mailing out ballots to everyone and provide them with less stringent rules of security. It's quite another to invalidate those votes and voters after they have followed those rules that you couldn't stop the first time around. Honestly,  it's simply not in Trump's best interest or the best interest of the country to do so.

I have no issues with questioning this election. There are obvious issues in plain sight to anyone willing to see them. But perhaps the better option is to use what we learned and try to make changes to things moving forward. After 2016, Congress passed laws that made it more difficult for social media and others to accept revenue for election ads that ultimately came from foreign sources. We should take an even harder look at what went wrong in 2020, and pass some new laws that will help prevent the widespread problems we saw in this election. 

After all... election integrity is something everyone should want.