We all know when a team has given up. Morale, communication, and coordination plummet. Easy shots are suddenly impossible. Obvious wide open opportunities to score or advance the ball are suddenly invisible. And not least, creativity takes a nosedive and the team’s efforts devolve into half-hearted repeats of the same tired set of plays – even when it’s clear the other team has them all figured out, and they no longer work.

So it is with Team Trump.

Like other Apex Predators, McConnell possesses the instinctive ability to detect weakness. And it’s very clear he has seen it in the President and his inability to move the ball forward on the election fraud issue where it matters.

Let’s not kid ourselves here. After more than six weeks and the passage of numerous deadlines, the Trump Campaign is still at Square 1 with apparently no idea how to advance beyond trying what has failed over and over and over again.

For some reason, I do not believe the 65th (the actual number doesn’t matter at this point) lawsuit would fare any better any better than the other 64 – even if 65 is the product of two primes and this time they’ll file in Guam.

The obvious conclusion at this point is that Team Trump has given up and so has Trump himself. McConnell is only acknowledging the obvious.

At this point, no one can tell me that a single member of Trump’s campaign or legal team still thinks there’s any chance of a judge throwing out the votes of the entire States of Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin no matter how elegant or technically sound their arguments. Especially without any direct unequivocal evidence of fraud sufficient to impact on the results.

Even the greenest intern at the storied legal offices of S.Illy, I.Diots & F.Ools could have told you, a month ago; no, that’s not going to happen.

Yet the Trump team continues to file suits asking judges to do just that. Because there’s literally nothing else they can think of to do – they’ve given up.

Remember, one of the things that go when you give up is the ability to see other opportunities and the will and creativity to exploit them even if, by some chance, someone points them out to you.

The only way forward is to gather and develop forensic evidence of electoral fraud that cannot be explained away. It’s been obvious since the week after Election Day.

No one can tell me, at this point, that no upper echelon member of Team Trump is aware that forensic methods and technologies exist that can sift through tens of thousands of ballots in a single day and identify, and quantify, real ballots against fake.

Machines exist that can tell if an absentee ballot was produced by an authorized printer with the required security features, whether it ever entered the postal system, whether the voting on the ballot was done by a human being or another machine.

Purely from progress in materials microanalysis and scanning technologies, the notion that fake ballots cannot be separated out from the genuine once blended together has not been true for over a decade.

Again, this is not information that it can possibly be said that not one single member of Trump’s inner circle, including Trump himself, is unaware of.

Yet the Trump Campaign has not yet filed one lawsuit simply seeking access to the ballots in any of the four states, even after the December 8th Safe Harbor deadline, when the states are supposed to have officially concluded all their certification processes for the 2020 election and selected their slate of Electors.

To be clear, as President, Trump has the Constitutional and explicit statutory duty to investigate voter fraud, especially as it involves Federal elections. He also has the legal tools and authorities (from the Supremacy Clause to the “exigent circumstances” exemption in carrying out searches and seizures) to simply take possession of the ballots and other evidentiary materials for criminal investigation unencumbered by having to prove the amount of fraud meets any threshold.

Furthermore, with the Safe Harbor deadline past, any conflict between an investigation and the states’ wish to finish their counts, certify and seat their Presidential Electors is moot.

But December 8th came and went, and nothing happened. Neither the White House nor the Department of Justice announce the appointment of a Special Counsel or some other officer with delegated authority to carry out an investigation.

Instead Team Trump filed another lawsuit. Because Trump has given up.

The next important deadline was December 14th, the day the Electors sit in their state capitals to formally certify Joe Biden as President-elect. Perhaps, one would think, despite the time crunch, that Trump had been advised to wait until that also was done, lest any state make a claim of interference. But again, December 14th came and went, and nothing happened.

Instead, the Trump Campaign promises to file even more lawsuits. And Trump openly mulls appointing a Special Counsel … to investigate Hunter Biden.

McConnell, quite reasonably, decides he has seen enough. He is a lawyer; he knows there’s no courtroom path to victory for Trump, and it’s clear from the promise to file more lawsuits; Trump and his team have given up.

And so he gets up and like a true Southern gentleman, Mitch McConnell congratulates the now formally confirmed President-elect of the United States, Joseph R. Biden of Delaware.

It’s simply a matter of acknowledging reality.

So if you want to be mad, I suggest you be mad at the President who has given up.

****.