What could happen here?

 This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while.  The impetus was a column by Ross Douthat on October 5 called "The Once and Future Threat of Trump," which argued that he had been basically right in a column from 2020 called "There Will be No Trump Coup":  that even if Trump had been more organized and competent, he didn't have the institutional support he would need to pull off a coup.  Douthat said that this continued to be true, so Trump's "threat to constitutional norms is one of many percolating dangers in the United States today, not a singular danger that should organize all other political choices and suspend all other disagreements."   I think he is right in saying that the probability of a coup was, and continues to be, very low.  The reasons are a strong military tradition of political neutrality and an independent judiciary that operates on the basis of a large accumulation of legal precedent.  

Douthat also said that Trump didn't get much support from Republican elected officials:  "No statehouse leader proposed setting aside the popular vote, no state legislature put such a measure on the floor, no Republican governor threatened to block certification."   But he doesn't mention that Texas filed suit which asked (to quote Wikipedia):  "to temporarily withhold the certified vote count from these four states [Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia]  prior to the Electoral College vote on December 14."  Seventeen other state attorneys general signed on to a brief supporting the suit, and a majority of the Republican members of the House of Representative (about 125) signed on to another one.  After the Supreme Court denied the suit and the Electoral College cast its votes, most Republican representatives, and several Senators, voted against "certifying" them on January 6.  So some Republican officials didn't go along with Trump, but others did.

The American electoral system (especially for Presidents) is very complex and provides many opportunities for grandstanding--making a statement that you can be pretty sure won't make a difference.  For example, the attorneys general undoubtedly knew that the Supreme Court would reject the suit, and the Republican representatives knew that the Democrats had enough votes to get the certification approved.   

The complexity of the system also means that there's no definite stopping point--if they put their minds to it, people can think of new ways to grandstand and pass things along to someone else (usually the courts).  So last time no state legislature tried to set aside the popular vote, but if the Democrats win narrowly in 2024, I'd be willing to bet that one will.  And after seeing how much heat Doug Ducey and Brian Kemp have taken, some Republican governor may decline to certify a Democratic win.  In either case, they could say (and maybe believe) that they're not really trying to overrule the vote, they're just raising questions.  The courts would probably reject these efforts, but at some point you might an unpredictable decision (especially in the state courts), so things might remain unsettled until almost the day of inauguration, or even after.  So elections could start becoming like votes to raise the debt ceiling, where we've gotten used to crises that are averted at the last minute.  I'm surprised that Douthat doesn't anticipate something like this, since it fits with his idea of decadence--a political system that is increasingly unable to do even basic things.