If I may paraphrase the immortal words of Michael Corleone: Just when we thought we were out, they pull us back in.

Ringing out 2020 at midnight was never going to be easy, because the calendar is just an artificial construct. If I may quote the immortal words of Matthew McConaughey in True Detective: Time is a flat circle.

In other words, this horrific year will bleed into 2021 – thanks to the craven calculations of Senator Josh Hawley, a Trump flunky and Mini Me, who has decided to pre-launch his 2024 presidential bid by disputing Joe Biden’s decisive victory when Congress meets next Wednesday to confirm it.

Yup, there’s no better way to serenade the MAGA saps than to sign up for Trump’s failed con d’etat, to strike a blow for the authoritarian mindset, to attack the democratic process and the U.S. Constitution.

By vowing to disrupt the ceremonial certification, Hawley will trigger a lengthy Trumpian poopstorm. Some MAGA bitter-enders in the House have already signaled their desire to overthrow the will of the people in the free and fair election – and, by law, if any senator joins any House members to fight certification, both chambers are then required to debate and vote on the race. Biden will ultimately win what he’s already won, because Democrats run the House, and many Senate Republicans, including its leaders, have already recognized Biden’s win. But Hawley will force his GOP colleagues to choose between loyalty to Trump and loyalty to the Constitution.

The whole exercise will be a waste of time, and inflict further damage on our democratic values, but that’s fine with Hawley, because his main intent is to outflank other ’24 wannabees – Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, the usual suspects – and thus raise his profile in the competition for Trump’s cultists.

And you thought perhaps we were done with all this?

Hawley said yesterday, “Millions of voters concerned about voter integrity deserve to be heard.” That statement was a classic MAGA con. More than 90 federal and state judges have thrown out Trump’s baseless attempts to overthrow the election – precisely because there was zero empirical evidence of election fraud. And Christopher Krebs, the lifelong Republican who ran the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said last month that the election was “the most secure in American history.” (Trump fired him for saying that.)

Memo to Hawley: Just because “millions of voters” guzzle Trump’s relentless lies about a rigged election, that doesn’t mean those dupes “deserve to be heard” on the Senate floor, in a wasteful debate that will only succeed in doing more damage to the credibility of our election process. But apparently we’ve reached the point where it’s deemed OK, by some opportunists, to strike a blow for sedition.

Nothing like that happened in January 2001, when the Senate met to ceremonially ratify George W. Bush’s victory. With help from the U.S. Supreme Court, Bush had prevailed by only 537 votes in one state – and yet, not a single Democratic senator rose to slime the result. Al Gore, the lame-duck vice president, had to stand in the chamber and preside over his own defeat. Yet today, with Biden prevailing by seven million votes after having flipped five states, Josh Hawley has the gall to go on record against democracy, to say without a shred of evidence that the election was fixed.

And I’d always thought that Republicans prided themselves on being patriotic.

Hawley’s stunt will fail and Biden will be inaugurated. But this is about playing the long game. If Trump foregoes another presidential bid – if he’s too tied up in criminal court – his toxic spawn may well compete for his base by sliming Biden as an illegitimate president. Hawley has fired the first shot.

So with respect to the MAGA mentality – if I may be permitted one final paraphrase – it was Winston Churchill who suggested that we’re not at the beginning of the end, but rather the end of the beginning.

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Nevertheless, the happiest possible new year to all – and thanks so much for reading my stuff in 2020.