If Trump is beaten in November, the charge of election fraud offers him two options: a face-saving excuse, if he wants to go quietly; or a reason for not accepting the result, if he tries to hang on in the White House. Who knows which way this erratic and thin-skinned fabulist will jump? The constitution gives him almost three-further months in the White House before he is required to relinquish office at noon on January 20, 2021. That allows plenty of time for several changes of mind, all kinds of machinations, and intervention again by the Supreme Court.
If by Inauguration Day there is still deadlock between Trump and Biden, the presidency passes to the president pro tempore of the Senate, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who by then would be 87. In 2001 it would have been the 98-year-old Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.
By the way, to end on a pessimistic note, I fear that the draft free-trade agreement could be mislaid in the mess.
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