Wall Street won't let Trump steal the election

What recent American history suggests about a potential crisis of democracy

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

The megabank JPMorgan told clients this week that "in the event of a [Joe] Biden victory, it is unclear what an antagonistic transfer of power would look like." It's a comment — hardly reassuring — that was likely provoked by President Trump again declining to commit to a peaceful transition of presidential power if he loses to the Democratic nominee in November.

Or maybe December. Well, we better hope it's no later — December 14, to be specific. That's when the Electoral College electors meet to cast their ballots for president and vice president. And plenty of the scary electoral scenarios now swirling about concern that process. In "The Election That Could Break America," Barton Gellman, a staff writer at The Atlantic, reports that President Trump's "state and national legal teams are already laying the groundwork for post-election maneuvers that would circumvent the results of the vote count in battleground states." This could result in a chaotic Electoral College vote, perhaps finally settled by Vice President Mike Pence. "To a modern democratic sensibility, discarding the popular vote for partisan gain looks uncomfortably like a coup, whatever license may be found for it in law," Gellman writes.

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James Pethokoukis

James Pethokoukis is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he runs the AEIdeas blog. He has also written for The New York Times, National Review, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and other places.