\n\n“Trump, it seems, isn\u2019t the only dead-ender holding out more than a month after the election, refusing to acknowledge defeat. Even as Trump lost again in court on Friday, with the Supreme Court rejecting a long-shot effort to overturn the election, he remains a lodestar for denialists of the GOP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In California, a Republican congressional candidate trounced in Democratic-heavy Los Angeles is still refusing to concede \u2014 while simultaneously announcing he\u2019s running for governor. In Maryland, a congressional candidate beaten by more than 40 percentage points is still complaining about \u201cirregularities\u201d in her election. And in Tennessee, a House candidate defeated by more than 57 percentage points has reached out to the ubiquitous pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell to air her grievances about an election that no Republican had any chance of winning \u2014 but that she\u2019s convinced she did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The down-ballot parroting of Trump\u2019s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud began right after the election. But in the weeks since, it has evolved into a self-sustaining phenomenon of its own. Republican candidates for House, legislative and gubernatorial races in more than half a dozen states are still refusing to concede.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Echoing the president, these candidates are an early sign of what Republicans say will be a sustained, post-Trump effort to tighten voting restrictions and to reverse measures implemented in many states to make voting easier. They also may mark the beginning of a Trump-inspired trend of candidates who never fold \u2014 they just fade away after weeks and months of unsubstantiated allegations of fraud.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“On Friday, after the Supreme Court\u2019s rejection of an effort to overturn the presidential election, Webber suggested on Twitter that even the court\u2019s action was a sign of something sinister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s how you know it\u2019s deeper than anyone could have ever imagined,\u201d he said.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
LC: This could lay the groundwork for further deterioration of democracy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n