Codevilla explains.

Now, black letter law.

The Trump campaign are plaintiffs. They have no obligation to prove anything. Nor do they have the power to subpoena things, documents, and persons, nor to compel testimony that might be dispositive regarding the sufficiency of fraud. Nor do they have the right to adjudicate disputes any more than the press has the right or power to do so.

The plaintiff’s only burden is to establish in the minds of persons who are empowered by law to subpoena evidence, compel, testimony, etc. what the semi-sacred words of American law call “probable cause” that fraud may have been committed. These persons are courts, principally federal, as well as state legislatures that possess investigative powers, as well as the U.S. Justice Department. These institutions (other than Justice) are also the only ones that have the right to decide what constitutes sufficient proof of what.

The Trump campaign has spoken in ways that suggest that it can prove fraud. It cannot. Not as a matter of law nor, given its lack of subpoena powers and compulsive power, can it do so as a matter of fact. Giving that impression, it has tended to discourage the persons who should be seized by their duty to follow “probable cause” of fraud—and there is plenty of that.

The Enemedia wretches cawing about the “lack of any evidence” are perfectly aware of the distinction between “evidence” and “proof,” of course. Likewise, they also know full well that Trump’s legal team is under no obligation whatsoever to reveal any part of the probable-cause evidence to them, nor to any other living soul on Earth not directly involved in the investigatory and/or litigation process.

Yes, Tucker too. He was dead wrong when he jumped all over Powell after she repeatedly declined to make her case and present her evidence, in full or in part, for his TV audience. Sorry, Tucker, but you have neither the right nor the weight to make such a demand. By persisting well beyond the point where you should have just backed off and let it go, all you accomplished was to make yourself look like a petty, petulant, over-entitled jackass. Hate to say it, but that’s the long and the short of it.

But while we’re excerpting Codevilla, let’s all follow along as he delves into the underpinnings of the whole damnable 2020 mess, a blatantly stolen election being only the ne plus ultra of this shaggy-ass goatfuck of a year.

For four decades beginning in the mid-1960s, a class of rulers grew in America. They became ever more uniform socially and intellectually, ever more opposed to the rest of Americans, and ever more powerful. This happened as government took upon itself the tasks of eliminating poverty and harmonizing the races, and as it controlled ever greater shares of the national income.

Increasingly, their powers were based on claims of expertise coming from the universities. These underwent a fourfold increase in size (from 9 percent of Americans with four-year degrees in 1965 to 36 percent in 2015). Their connection with government conferred both wealth and additional prestige. Few paid attention to President Eisenhower’s warning about the connection between government and academic elites.

Elsewhere, I have discussed how inherently pregnant with peril the existence of such a class was for constitutional life. Suffice it to say, by the beginning of the Obama Administration in 2009, the rest of Americans had sensed that American public life had ceased to revolve around the struggle between Democrats and Republicans, and was more between those who lived by the ruling class’ privileges, and those who did not—between the “ins” and the “outs,” between the ruling class and what had been known in English history as the country class.

During the Obama years, the American country class’ budding resistance spurred the ruling class further to become conscious of itself, to increase its own privileges, its cohesion, and above all its contempt for and demands on those below them. Political correctness ceased to be bemusing for the country class and came to be seen as the threat to freedom that it is. Corporate America became indistinguishable from government in its demands for compliance. That is why the 2016 presidential primaries and election revealed a substantial anti-ruling class majority among Americans, though it was split between opposite ends of the political spectrum.

In short, during the Obama years the ruling class was becoming an oligarchy that ruled by exercising the powers of government and of incumbency in corporations as well as all manner of social institutions. Private institutions, allied with government and inspired by government-supported universities, increasingly exercised arbitrary powers.

But by November 2016 this oligarchy had yet to articulate itself into something capable of acting for a common purpose. That is why the 2016 election may prove to have been the last more-or-less bona fide free election in America’s history.

Count on it. The one and only amusement Real Americans can savor from the situation, bitter though it is: the Gentleman Losers of the GOPe seem to truly believe that, now that the horrible Orange Man will soon be disposed of, we can all get back to business as usual straightaway, just like it was back in the good old Before Times. Gee, too bad for them that Codevilla is perfectly correct about 2016 being the last relatively free election this country will have, until/unless the rotten and illegitimate FederalGovCo is toppled and replaced with something entirely else.

The Democrat-Socialist crime cartel is now large and in charge, and they aim to keep it that way too. So can anyone really be so obtuse as to imagine that, having successfully swindled their way back into absolute power, they’ll balk at any conceivable skullduggery to do it over and over again from now on? Because what, they’re just too nice, too morally upright, too honorable to stoop to such chicanery more than just this one time?

It is to laugh. Say it with me: They will not stop. They will have to BE stopped. Until such time as we muster the yarbles to do it, we’re all in for a rough, rough ride, folks.