The sloppy, patchwork, spaghetti-at-the-wall effort to steal the presidency

As you review Trump’s efforts, patterns become apparent. While the overall effort to seize a second term in office was lengthy and complicated, none of the individual efforts to advance it went very far. This was almost never a function of Trump simply realizing that he was overreaching or his coming to understand that he was inappropriately crossing a boundary. It was, instead, because those against whom he was applying pressure resisted. At times, this was virtuous, as with Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to execute the last-ditch effort to block electoral-vote counting. At other times, it seems likely that the objections were self-serving, as when Trump’s attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani objected to the seizure of voting machines advocated by his rival, attorney Sidney Powell. But it was others, including state-level institutions and even local actors, who applied the brakes to the plot. It was almost never Trump.