Slate: “Control of the Senate hinges on two Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia. Democrats are doing well there in early voting, so Republicans need a big win among Georgians who cast their ballots on voting day. That shouldn’t be a problem for the GOP, because the party that loses a presidential election tends to do well in elections immediately afterward. One reason is that some voters in the middle prefer to limit the power of the incoming president by electing politicians from the opposition. Polls in Georgia fit this pattern: Up to now, they’ve shown that slight pluralities are inclined to reelect the two Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, to ‘check’ Joe Biden. All Trump had to do was get out of the way. He could have conceded on Nov. 7, when the media called the election, or in the days and weeks afterward, as states certified their results. If he had conceded on Dec. 14, when the Electoral College confirmed Biden’s victory, that would have given the GOP three weeks to acknowledge defeat, mourn the loss, and rally voters against Biden.”

“Instead, Trump made himself a bigger threat. He met with martial-law proponents at the White House, demanded that the election be overturned, and approved a plan to challenge the results in Congress in early January. The timing couldn’t be worse. As Georgians prepare to vote, many of them won’t be thinking about checking Biden. They’ll be thinking about checking Trump.”