Sullivan: ‘I’m going to accept the election results’
It's worth pausing on how strange this moment is. A sitting senator is being asked, on national television, whether he'll accept the result of an election that hasn't happened yet, and the reason he has to answer is that the Justice Department filed a lawsuit to invalidate results if his opponent wins. Sullivan said he would accept the outcome, which is the right thing to say, but the fact that the question even comes up tells you how far the norms have shifted.
The DOJ lawsuit is the part I keep coming back to. A federal agency trying to preemptively void an election result is extraordinary, and it puts Sullivan in a tricky spot. He's distancing himself from that while also not exactly condemning it. I'd want to know what legal theory the department is relying on and whether it has any precedent. Accepting results is the bare minimum of democratic citizenship, but the lawsuit itself deserves scrutiny. Sullivan's answer is reassuring, but it doesn't resolve the deeper question of why the machinery of government is being pointed at a specific race.