As the state certification of the 2020 presidential election results come down to the wire, more and more members of the Happy Loser Caucus are surfacing. They complain that it is just so blue-collar, so working-class, so down-scale for President Trump to continue to fight it out now that all the news organizations and Important People™ have declared that the race is over. There is no doubt that President Trump faces an uphill struggle as critical state after critical state is required to certify the election results. Courts are signaling an unwillingness to get involved in the electoral process now that the votes are cast… though they were more than willing to alter state laws to the advantage of Joe Biden before Election Day.

There is a certain desperation in the calls for President Trump to concede defeat. One senses that the concern is much more about a fear of having to explain his decision to fight on to leftwing friends at a cocktail party (while wearing a face mask and engaging in social distancing) than it does about anything having to do with the integrity of the election process and the fate of the nation. (The Quisling Caucus Begins to Form as Some Republican Senators Call for Joe Biden to Receive President-Elect Intelligence Briefing.) This is an example of what is out there.

If you believe 2, it would be entirely rational to just give up. Which means that the conspiracy mongers are undermining their own (presumed) long-term cause. https://t.co/ttuM64kNc6

— Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) November 21, 2020

This is some sad, sad stuff. Not as sad as what has been floated, see The Conservative Case for Vote Fraud, but very, very sad nonetheless. Ed Whelan, who I do not know and have never met (to the best of my knowledge and belief) but whose writings I’ve followed assiduously over the past four years as a man he does not particularly support, has done more to shape the federal bench than any Republican President in my lifetime, is not simply wrong. This is so wrong, so ill-thought-out that it beggars comprehension.

First off, Option #1 is not an option for the coalition that Trump has built. Why? Vince Lombardi, who coached football back when it was a manly sport, and before loathing the United States was a core value and gender-fluid mediocrities were made into role models, said, “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.”

In the movie “Patton,” the premise is succinctly laid out in the opening scene. I have it cued up for your convenience; run it to 1:54.

So, no, walking away from this election, particularly under these circumstances, will not encourage people who believed in the Trump candidacy to stay politically active, and it will not hold together the Trump coalition. People do not get fired up to support meek and mild losers. That’s why the Draft Mitt Romney boomlet never materialized.

As for Option #2, you either believe that rules were changed in a way that permitted vote fraud on a scale that changed the outcome of the election, or you don’t. Right now, public opinion polls suggest that over 70% of all Republicans and about one-third of all Democrats believe the election was stolen. Read As Recounts and Court Cases Mount 70 Percent of Republicans Have Concluded the Election Was Fraudulent and this from PJ Media for more details. That means that about half of all Americans believe Joe Biden was the beneficiary of widespread fraud. And with good reason, read Our Election Process Looks at Least as Fraudulent as That of Gabon and Ukraine and There Is No Reason to Trust the Results.

For reasons that escape me, Whelan suggests that President Trump’s best play, if he believes the election was stolen, is to just stop fighting. Because not protesting a blatant theft — and it was a blatant theft designed and executed to communicate a very clear message, read This Isn’ t Just the Theft of an Election, This Is a Message to All of Us — is going to motivate the people who supported you, like by participating in the massive #StopTheSteal marches, to turn out.

I don’t think it is an accident that the only solution deemed reasonable by Whelan is one that would totally demoralize the Trump coalition. The people who tried to foist Scott Walker and Jeb Bush off on us in the 2016 primary want to see the last of the people who turned out for Trump rallies and put Trump in the White House the first time around. They want them to go away so they can go back to being Happy Losers with cable news contributor gigs. They want to go back to selling American patrimony to China and giving the Chamber of Commerce all the cheap labor it wants while providing the Democrats with hordes of economically dependent, illegal alien voters.

As I posted several days ago, President Trump Must Never Concede This Election to Joe Biden. He gains nothing by doing so. To concede means that he either disavows his own claims of election fraud, or he suddenly says that what he was fighting tooth and nail for yesterday is not worth fighting for. The best choice for President Trump and those who support him is to never, ever admit that the man who has stolen this election was legitimately elected. We may eventually run out of all Constitutional options, and Joe Biden may be inaugurated as Commander-in-Thief, but he should face unrelenting opposition, and President Trump should be on the road, packing stadiums, to remind America that Biden’s election was a fraud.