Colwell: Are fears about 2024 election nonsense? Or, after Jan. 6 riot, common sense?

The authors of a Politico article nearly 17 months before the 2020 presidential election conceded that constitutional experts and top Republican lawmakers dismissed the danger they were citing as nonsense.

Critics were quoted as saying there was no possibility of the danger materializing and brushing aside the fear as something for a science fiction movie.

I read it back then, finding it interesting speculation but not a topic I would write about. It didn’t seem likely and maybe was kind of silly.

Nonsense? No possibility? Science fiction? Kind of silly?

That Politico article in June of 2019, by journalists Natasha Bertrand and Darren Samuelsohn, comes to mind amid speculation now a similar kind of danger.

The Politico headline was:

“What if Trump won’t accept 2020 defeat?”

The journalists reported “chattering in the halls of Congress and throughout the Beltway” about that possibility, even though “the scenarios all seem far-fetched.”

While they raised the question, they gave ample space for quoting those who scoffed at the possibility.

“This is the least concern people should have. Of all the silly things that are being said, that may be the silliest,” said Roy Blunt, then a prominent Republican senator from Missouri. “The one thing we are really good at is the transition of power.”

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Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert, said a lingering incumbent would simply become irrelevant once the dully elected president was sworn in. “The system would make fast work on any president who attempted to deny the results of the election,” Turley said.

“As untraditional a president as he is, I think he understands if you lose an election, you lose an election and the other person wins,” said Steve Chabot, then a Republican from Ohio on the powerful House Judiciary Committee. “There’s no chance of anything like that possibly happening. That’s just hysteria.”

Democrats also were skeptical about any possibility of Trump attempting to stay in the White House after defeat.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said, “Even my Republican colleagues, who are not willing to impeach, have said to me that they would not stand for a president defying a court-certified election result.”

A lawyer with Democratic clients and specializing in election litigation said that court challenges contesting results couldn’t drag on indefinitely because of deadlines for submitting an official vote tally. Yep. Jan. 6, 2021.

While raising the question of whether Trump would refuse to accept defeat, the Politico writers didn’t predict what he might do in refusal.

They didn’t speculate that he might rile supporters to storm the Capitol and threaten to hang the vice president.

They didn’t cite a possibility that he would seek to use fake electors to replace the real ones.

They didn’t foresee that he never would concede in the traditional American way of peaceful transition, no matter what recounts, courts, electors and his own attorney general said.

They did quote what Trump had said prior to the 2016 election and as the 2020 election approached, that he wouldn’t believe vote totals showing he lost.

But who really thought Trump would go as far as he did to try to stay on in the White House?

Now come warnings about possible danger looming with the 2024 vote.

If he loses, will Trump again refuse to accept the results and stir insurrection?

If he wins, will Trump be more than dictator for just the first day and suspend the Constitution in order to stay on for a third term?

He long has toyed with rally crowds about the possibility of a third term, saying the Constitution could be suspended to allow it because of all the investigations disrupting his presidency.

He asks, “Do you think the people would demand that I stay?”

Is he being witty? Or half-witty?

Are fears to be brushed off? Nonsense? No possibility? Science fiction? Kind of silly?

Jack Colwell is a columnist for The Tribune. Write to him in care of The Tribune or by email at jcolwell@comcast.net.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: 2024 election fears mirror 2020 fears.