É hoje que os Eleitores dos 50 estados norte-americanos entregarão os resultados das eleições que elegerão Joe Biden como o 46º. Presidente dos Estados Unidos da América.
Transcrevo a seguir o roteiro da tramitação do processo eleitoral, c/p do site CNN live, aqui.
O que engendrará Trump para, até ao último momento, obstruir a sua derrota e a posse do seu sucessor? Ninguém sabe; o que se sabe é que com Trumpo pode acontecer tudo, mesmo o impensável dentro das coordenadas democráticas, que Trump já provou, repetidamente, desconhecer.
Trump lança ao ar sementes diabólicas das suas ambições ditatoriais e fica à coca que cresça a erva venenosa do ódio e da vingança.
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(CNN)A constitutional ritual that is normally a little-noticed curiosity will Monday turn into a symbol of the US political system's durability while under assault from a defeated President seeking to overturn a democratic election.
Electors from 50 states and the District of Columbia will gather across the country to cast their ballots, which will confirm Joe Biden as the rightful 46th president and California Sen. Kamala Harris as vice president.
A
moment of historic resonance will activate safeguards stemming from the
founders' fears nearly 250 years ago of a monarchical leader wielding
unaccountable power to counter President Donald Trump, who has
repeatedly spurned the fundamental principles of American democracy.
Earlier attempts by Trump to strong-arm local Republican lawmakers to
produce delegations in swing states that would ignore the will of
millions of voters and his election loss failed. So ballots cast Monday
will confirm Biden will surpass the 270 electoral votes needed for
victory. The ballots will be transmitted to Washington, DC, to be
tallied in Congress on January 6, when a building -- but almost
certainly futile -- rearguard by Republican lawmakers may expose a large
rump of the party that has also turned against the democratic
principles that underpin free and fair elections.
Despite the certainty of the constitutional choreography that will confirm Trump's loss, several rebukes from the Supreme Court and multiple court losses, he refuses to accept reality and put the country first by accepting defeat.
"It's
not over ... we're going to continue to go forward," Trump told Fox
News in an interview recorded Saturday, before tweeting on Sunday that
the nation's top bench had "chickened out" by ruling Friday that Texas had no standing to file a case on his behalf.
Veteran
Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg told CNN's Ana Cabrera on
Sunday that the blunt Supreme Court dismissals of Trump's cases were
"the briefest and most summary of dismissals possible. That is a signal
in lawyer talk about 'don't waste our time with these theories that you
are spouting out.' "
Biden to speak
After
slates of electors formally selected by voters in the indirect
presidential election system in November fulfill their duties on Monday,
Biden plans to deliver a speech on the resilience of US democracy. It
will be his latest effort to unite a fractured nation even as the
outgoing President seeks to doom his legitimacy with baseless claims of
vote fraud.
The process will
confirm, yet again, that Biden will take office on January 20 at noon,
ending Trump's one-term presidency -- a fact that some, but still
clearly not all leading Republicans, agree is now inevitable.
"I
will just say that, obviously, he is the President-elect. He has 270
Electoral College votes," Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said on CNN's
"State of the Union" on Sunday, crossing Trump in a way many colleagues
still refuse to do.
Indeed,
126 of Cassidy's GOP colleagues in the House -- including Minority
Leader Kevin McCarthy -- signed onto the desperate complaint that the
Supreme Court rejected last week and that an ally, former New Jersey
Gov. Chris Christie, blasted on ABC News "This Week" as an "absurdity."
Since
the election, Trump has made delusional claims he won landslides in
states where he clearly lost to Biden. Judges have treated his frivolous
claims of fraud with contempt. He's turned on the Supreme Court
majority he built because it won't hear his fantastical cases. And now,
the President is even considering firing his ultra-loyal Attorney General William Barr, who
pointed out the truth that there are no widespread indications of the
electoral corruption Trump insists cost him a second term.
Ignoring the pandemic
The
President's obsessive behavior since the election has coincided with
the most extreme and tragic phase of a pandemic that he ignored and
denied, and has exacerbated the conditions in which many Americans are
dying each day.
He has done little
to bring rival factions in Congress together with millions of Americans
unemployed and hungry because of the pandemic and lawmakers still unable
to agree on a rescue bill including extended jobless benefits. The authorization of the first vaccine,
which could begin being administered on Monday, is a hugely hopeful
step that augurs an eventual return to normal life. And Trump and his
administration deserve credit for their role in the swift developments
of the doses. Federal health authorities say they can vaccinate 100
million Americans by the end of March.
But
it will be late spring or early summer 2021 until most people get the
necessary two doses, meaning that deprivations and restrictions will
continue for many more months.
Some senior aides to Trump, who have only weeks left to serve, were to be among the first to receive the vaccine
in what officials said was an effort to preserve the continuity of
power, CNN reported Sunday evening. That would have meant that officials
in a White House that long ignored the severity of the pandemic,
downplayed mask wearing and mocked social distancing that could slow the
spread of the virus, could have gotten immunity long before most of the
general public.
Trump tweeted late
Sunday night that he is adjusting the timing for when White House
officials should receive the vaccine, saying they "should receive the
vaccine somewhat later in the program, unless specifically necessary."
"I am not scheduled to take the vaccine, but look forward to doing so at the appropriate time," he said.
A waning fantasy
Monday's events will test how long the fantasy of a second Trump term can endure.
The
President's crusade to disenfranchise millions of voters who cast legal
ballots against him is an appropriate coda for a presidency in which he
has consistently destroyed democratic guardrails in order to pursue his
own political goals.
His actions
have also sharpened the dilemma of many of his fellow Republicans. A
few, like Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, have spoken out strongly in favor of
democratic principles. But others have contributed to Trump's fraying of
trust in US democracy by equivocating and refusing to refer to Biden as
President-elect. Others like Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana,
the second-ranking House Republican, are perpetuating Trump's fiction
that he won the election.
"If you
want to restore trust by millions of people who are still very
frustrated and angry about what happened, that's why you've got to have
the whole system play out," Scalise said on "Fox News Sunday." "There
will be a president sworn in on January 20, but let's let this legal
process play itself out," the congressman said, despite the fact that
the Supreme Court has twice shut down Republican legal gambits intended
to overthrow the election.
Trump transition
- Trump schemes next political moves after effort to overthrow democracy dead ends at Supreme Court | Analysis
- Trump raised firing Barr in White House meeting on Friday
- Trump engages in self-sabotage ahead of historic vaccine rollout | Analysis
- The Supreme Court's clear message to President Trump: Stop
- MAP: Full presidential election results
Trump's
gaslighting has convinced millions of his more than 70 million voters
that the election was a farce and could irrevocably harm Biden's efforts
to unify the country. It has also led to ugly scenes like those in Washington over the weekend, where Trump supporters, including members of the far-right Proud Boys group, clashed with anti-Trump demonstrators.
Tennessee
Sen. Lamar Alexander, who is retiring and doesn't have to face voters
again, said Sunday that the votes of the Electoral College should mark a
watershed moment in Trump's effort to contest the election.
"I hope that he puts the country first," Alexander said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"It
looks very much like the electors will vote for Joe Biden," he said,
and argued there should be no question about election results after
Monday.
"We need to not lose one day in the transition in getting the vaccine out," Alexander said.
An agonizing moment for Pence
It
is not unheard of for individuals among the 538 electors who represent
every state and the District of Columbia to go rogue. In 2016, for
example, there were a record 10 "faithless" electors. And there is no
constitutional stipulation that binds electors to vote for the candidate
who receives a plurality of the popular vote in their state. Still,
many states replace electors who go rogue or fine them. And Trump's
efforts to convince state legislators in states that he lost, like
Pennsylvania, and seat electors favorable to him fell short. Biden's
victory is so wide — 306 to 232 electoral votes -- that symbolic defections will not matter.
Electors
are picked by state parties and exclude federal lawmakers but usually
include local officials and party alumni. In New York, for example,
former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton will ceremonially cast electoral voters for Biden.
The
Electoral College voting on Monday -- on the legally mandated first
Monday after the second Wednesday in December -- will set up an even
more intriguing constitutional ballet on January 6. That is the moment
when electoral ballots cast on Monday will be counted during a joint
session of Congress -- another occasion that is normally perfunctory but
that will take on extra constitutional significance this year. Some
Republican House members have already urged Trump not to concede when he
loses the Electoral College on Monday. They also want to hold a debate
on January 6 on the results of key states over allegations of fraud. If
one member of the House and one member of the Senate file an objection,
that process can take place in each chamber. But it remains unclear
whether any Republican senator is willing to take that step, which would
be academic anyway since Democrats control the House.
The
January 6 ceremony will set up a particularly excruciating moment for
Vice President Mike Pence, who has walked an undignified tight rope
between his own reputation and ostentatious loyalty for Trump for the
past four years.
Since it's his job
as president of the Senate to count the electoral votes, it will fall
to Pence to officially declare Biden and Harris victors of an election
Trump falsely claims was stolen.
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