President-elect Joe Biden said his transition team's efforts were proceeding smoothly,despite Republicans' refusal to acknowledge defeat.Credit:AP
A week on from the election,Trump and the vast majority of Republican officials are showing no sign of accepting defeat. There's no reason to expect this to change soon — certainly not within the next month. The members of the Electoral College won't meet until December 14 to certify each state's election results. It won't be until December 23 until those results are transmitted to Congress.
This process would usually be a formality:the losing candidate would already have conceded,a transition process would be under way and the departing president would have invited his successor to the White House for a meeting. But this is no normal presidential election year.
Trump is going to string this out for as long as he can,and it's in Republicans'self-interest to play along. They are terrified of being seen as insufficiently loyal to Trump. And with two Senate run-off elections looming in Georgia in January,they know it is to their benefit to keep the base fired up andkeep donations coming into the Republican National Committee's coffers.
Expect more,not less,of the rhetoric we saw on Wednesday from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when the nation's top diplomat said there would be a"smooth transition to a second Trump administration".