During an NFL football game, each coach has the ability to challenge the referee's ruling on the field at the end of any play.  (There are lots of restrictions on this right designed to discourage its use in all but the most important plays.)  Let's say a running back bursts through the line for a gain of 12 yards and then is tackled by a linebacker.  As the running back is going to the ground, he fumbles the ball, and a player on the other team falls on it.  As the defense is jumping up and down and celebrating this turnover, the referee blows his whistle and signals that the runner's knee touched the ground before the ball came loose, so there's no a fumble on the play, just a normal tackle.

At that point, the coach on the team that just lost the turnover can throw a red flag on the field, stop the clock, and challenge the play.  However, he must throw his flag before the other team snaps the ball for the next play.  If he chooses to challenge, and throws the flag on time, then the referee must watch video replays on a small screen set up on the sideline.  He sees the play from every angle and at different speeds to determine if the ruling on the field was correct.  While the ref is studying these replays, every person in the stands is also watching the replays on one of the largest video screens on the planet while the fans at home watch the same replays on their 72" high-definition TVs.  Everyone sees what the ref sees and can come to his own conclusion about the play.

But before any of this happens, there is usually one player on the field who already knows whether the fumble occurred or not: the running back.  If he's pretty sure the ball came out of his hands before his knee touched the ground, then he'll get his team lined up as quickly as possible so they can snap the ball before the other team's coach can challenge the play.  If they get the snap off in time, then the other team won't be able to challenge the play, and his team will get away with stealing a possession.  But even if they can prevent the challenge, the replays will still be shown all over the stadium, to the folks watching at home, and to everyone with an internet connection.  They'll see that the running back fumbled, the refs blew the call, and the other team had the game stolen from them (maybe, depending on how important that play was).

The Democrats (do I have to say "and the media," or is that redundant?) are the team that fumbled the ball.  And make no mistake: they clearly fumbled the ball in this election.  They spent four years, millions of dollars (some of them yours), hundreds of hours of airtime, and every public appearance telling the American people that Trump was destroying the country.  They blocked all good news coming out of Washington, made a mountain out of every molehill they could find, protected Joe Biden from scandal and scrutiny, gleefully destroyed a great economy, actively burned down cities, mobilized the entire federal government against the president, and even impeached him on charges their own witnesses refused to corroborate under oath.

Despite unloading all that firepower at the one man they hate most, they were hammered in House races (they didn't pick up a single House seat, lost every toss-up race, and have a much narrower majority), couldn't flip the Senate, didn't flip any governorships, and lost control of both legislative branches in New Hampshire without flipping a single state chamber away from the Republicans.  On top of all this, they could not defeat Trump, a man who is worse than Hitler, a man with the blood of 200,000 innocent Americans on his hands, the biggest racist, an unapologetic misogynist, the meanest, rudest, crudest man to ever sit behind the Resolute desk.  The only way they could even appear to have beaten this bad, bad man was to cheat.

So, they cheated.  We know they cheated.  We've seen the replay on the JumboTron, watched it over and over again at home, looked it up on the internet, read the analysis, and we know what happened.  The Dems know they cheated, too.  Everything they've done since November 3 is the equivalent of rushing up to the line of scrimmage to try to snap the ball before the challenge flag comes out: going outside to celebrate; calling Biden "President-Elect"; calling for unity, reconciliation, and acceptance; reminding us how graciously Obama assisted the Trump transition; and swooning over each of Biden's Cabinet appointees.  They haven't spent one minute trying to refute charges of election fraud, but they've spent lots of minutes dismissing, denying, and deriding them.  They're acting as if the next play has already been run and the Trump campaign has lost the ability to challenge the election.

It saddens me to say they may get away with it.  Trump's lawyers may run out of time; they might not be able to gather sufficient evidence; the evidence they have may not prove their case; the people who have the authority to certify the election results might not have the courage to act; the courts might waver in the face of a media onslaught.  If that happens, Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on January 20, 2021.

The problem for the Dems is that the replay shows they cheated whether the ref reversed the call or not.  Eighty million people will know they've had their votes stolen, and we will never forget.  Ask any New Orleans Saints fan why he didn't make it to the Super Bowl in 2018, or ask any Raiders fan about the Tuck Rule Game if you don't believe me.  And we shouldn't forget.  They are trying to steal the presidency not because they have an agenda that will help the working class or small businesses; not because they want to educate children; not because they know how to heal the racial divide, but only because they want to have and use power for themselves and their cronies.

Trump voters have always been the real resistance movement in this country.  We voted for him to resist the ruling class's designs for the country, resist the erosion of liberty at the hands of bigger and bigger government, resist the weakness of the Republican Party, resist race-baiting and division, resist the America-last globalist agenda, resist socialism, resist indoctrination, resist propaganda.  No matter what happens on January 20, we must continue to resist these things.  It will be harder with Trump out of the White House, but we must not — even for a second — give in to the idea that Joe Biden is a legitimate president.  That's something we must resist every day until the next election removes him (or Harris) from that great office.

Steve Matteucci has degrees in economics, law, taxation, and theology.  His book, How to Be a Trustee: Practical Thinking on Settling a Living Trust, is available on Amazon.