With Donald Trump edging closer to an orderly transition, there is cause to feel relief

In America, democracy is healing. Almost 250 years old, the nation’s constitution, conventions and institutions have faced many challenges, some far more potent than the antics of the Trump administration. 

Still, the denigration of democracy over the past four years has done real and lasting harm. It culminated in the denial of the legitimacy of a free and fair general election. The losing candidate, Donald Trump shouted fraud and claimed the election was “rigged”, with little or no evidence. He tweeted “STOP THE COUNT!” A series of hopeless legal actions were launched in increasingly bizarre style. He tried to lean on Republican state governors and legislators to subvert the electoral college. He refused to concede, ever. There was talk of President Trump trying to squat in the Oval Office.

Now, after a few bad-tempered public appearances, Mr Trump has found a way to preserve his pride and accept reality. Once persuaded – presumably by those closest to him – that he need never concede and could anyway authorise the usual transition activity, he has thawed a little. Even if Mr Trump’s latest press conference, and his tweets, are still full of confrontational language. 

It is a measure of how low American political life has sunk that the fact that this defeated president has only now agreed to vacate the White House on Inauguration Day if the electoral college votes for Democratic president-elect Joe Biden (as it will) is some kind of breakthrough. Still, it is a relief.

Donald Trump would not be Donald Trump if he admitted to anyone, including himself, that he is a “loser”, one of the grossest insults in the Trumpian lexicon. Losing to “sleepy Joe” Biden is an especially cruel blow. Obviously Mr Trump will continue to nurture the myth of the stolen election. Scraps of statistics, real or bogus, and witness accounts – none tested in court – will embellish the conspiracy theories. 

They will be tended to like delicate orchids by the army of Trumpian keyboard warriors. The myths and legends of the 2020 election will no doubt flourish in the hothouse environment of social media. The way Twitter and Facebook are maligned now by Mr Trump is deeply ironic.

In any case, Mr Trump won’t let go. He will continue to talk nonsense about the election, and offer his own unique running commentary in the Biden administration, a predictable flow of allegations of national betrayal and corruption. It will no doubt be amplified by some via social media and the new breed of partisan news stations, which Mr Trump may add to at some point.

None of that is likely to add to the quality of public discourse. Yet American politics has always been something of a rough house – the terms “gerrymander” and “pork barrel” are, after all, proudly American in origin. America has survived a civil war, a Great Depression, world wars, a Cold War, and seemingly endless foreign entanglements, red scares, Watergate, impeachments, corporate scandals, financial scandals, racial tensions and, yes, the abuse the system took in the Trump years. It survived, mostly in tact.

No doubt the coming years, leading to that 250th birthday on 4 July 2026, will see the system stress tested once again. We might even see President Trump return to office in time to oversee the sestercentennial of American democracy. Americans are free to choose to have him back should they wish, just as they were free to have recently rejected him, no matter what he says. Mr Trump is free to stand and argue his case. That is something to celebrate.