Republicans will regret this

Republicans are winning the battle of undermining faith in the election.

They won't like where this leads.

Trump and Republicans are doing an excellent job of weakening Biden. If that is their sole goal, they are succeeding. 

It isn't their sole goal.

Biden needed a honeymoon, and he won't get it. Biden does not create hope and excitement the way that Reagan, Obama, and Trump could. People with ability to connect emotionally create political consensus and movement where none existed before. Biden does not have that gift. His best hope was that his old friends and colleagues would want him to succeed so that the country will succeed. 

Biden needed every bit of the trappings and power of the office itself to lead, and that has been taken away. Biden's cannot achieve his goal of bipartisan action on infrastructure, on COVID vaccine distribution, on COVID economic mitigations, on national mask-wearing, on health care expansion, on the environment, on taxes, on everything. GOP officeholders want Biden to fail, or more exactly, they cannot be seen by Trump or Republican voters to be helping Biden succeed. Bipartisanship gets you a primary opponent.

There is a corollary and consequence to this partisan victory. Election reform.

Trump succeeded in making "election fraud" top of mind for GOP voters. Trump argues that states--even ones with strongly partisan Republican governors and election officials--are not to be trusted. He says they are run by dishonest or incompetent people and results should be thrown out. That is a big statement with big implications. The issue on the table today and tomorrow, with over a 120 Representatives and Senators signing on, is a demand that Congress--not the voters, not the states, not the electoral college--select the president by deciding which electoral votes are legitimate. 

First off, this is a direct slap to voters everywhere, especially to those in affected swing states. Republican leaders are saying that after asking the opinion of voters in a state, and voters suffering through the commercials, the text messages, the door knocking, them paying the expense of an election, and then getting a result, Republicans in Congress overrule their vote. That is the sort of thing that messes up relationships, personal and political. There is no nice way to spin this insult to voters, and it is being done to the voters of the battleground states. This will fester.

Republicans are advocating replacing the electoral college and claiming Congress has authority to over-rule it. The electoral college gives extra weight to the small and thinly settled mountain and plains states. Residents there are acutely aware of their advantage, in part because California complains loudly about it. Now Republicans are attempting to declare population-weighted Congress to be the body that chooses presidents. Congress is not held in high esteem, with consistent favorability ratings in the low teens. It has no credibility as a true reflection of the popular will. Congress is understood to be the sewer end of the swamp. Who taught Americans that? Experience, augmented by Trump saying so. 

Click: Republicans realize the precedent

The notion of this country being a federation of states rather than a single national government has been a bedrock of Republican thinking. In this era, Democrats have been more comfortable with the notion of a single national polity, particularly as regards elections. Republicans have advocated states' rights. Let each state handle elections on its own, they say. The tradition in southern states--now mostly red--to create roadblocks to voting by the "wrong" people--i.e. Blacks--is a multi-century project, now a matter of subterfuge and resistance. Southern states like doing it their way.

Republican attacks on state elections are the ideal foundation for federalizing national elections. After all, Trump says state elections are filled with fraud. Congress demands to check and approve the states' election work. Great. That means national rules and procedures to set the standards of wary legislators. Tell states exactly what is expected of them. That means national rules on felon voting, on residency, on absentee ballots, on dates, on voter ID, on paper backup, on purges of voter rolls. National rules would tend to expand voter access--a Democratic goal. 

National standards would also give impetus to a national popular vote for selection of presidents. After all, with good, credible national standards, the vote in each area is equally cast, which makes more plausible some Constitutional work-around like the popular vote interstate compact. Under current partisan voting patterns, a popular vote would bring landslide elections to Democrats. 

Democrats would be wise not to reflexively oppose the implications of Trump's critique, although opposition would be their instinct. The better long-term Democratic strategy is for President Biden and Democrats to agree that we need the radical reforms that Trump's concerns require. Put Democrats on the side of people voting; let Republicans try to defend over-ruling voters. Republicans have been saying to count every legal vote. Good for them. Good for Democrats.

The threat that Democrats would be OK with empowering Congress to decide the elections--or better yet that VP Kamala Harris has the power to discard Republican electoral votes--is a reminder to Republicans that election reform is better than an election hijacked by Congress or a VP, which is currently being advocated by Republicans. Trump has paved the way toward national elections and perhaps a national election-day holiday, the better to accommodate Trump's preferred way of voting, in-person. GOP voters are demanding it. Good.

This is a big win for Democrats if they see it as the opportunity it is.