ONE LAST TANTRUM

 

Donald Trump lost.  There is no question.  The election went smoothly, without violence or strife.  The votes have been counted and at this point Joe Biden received over seventy five million votes and Trump  over seventy one million.  In the Electoral College, Biden currently holds two hundred and ninety votes to Trump's two hundred and fourteen.  With three more states yet to finish counting, it is likely the final tally will be three hundred and six votes for Biden and two hundred and thirty two votes for Trump.  Although the time it took to finalize the vote counting in some states gave a few of us Biden supporters nightmares, in the end it wasn't that close an election.  Sure, Trump outperformed the polls (again), but a Biden victory was predicted months ago, and it was delivered Saturday when Pennsylvania was called for him.

For months leading up to the election, Trump has been saying that mail in voting is open to massive fraud and that he will contest the results.  And so that has come to pass. Without a word of concession, he has started legal proceedings in several states, led by his ghoul-like lawyer Rudy Giuliani.   

The chances of any of his legal arguments actually succeeding are virtually none.  If voting fraud did take place, that would have to mean that the Democratic party manipulated millions of votes in several different states, which would be the largest election scandal ever.  And that while  they were doing this, somehow they forgot  to defeat other Republican candidates, like Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell.  Devious and dumb at the same time!  While the Trump team seems to be holding onto the precedent set the last time there was a highly contested election (Bush Vs Gore in the year two thousand), it must be pointed out that that was an extremely close election (only half a million votes separated the two candidates) that all came down to a razor thin margin of around five hundred votes in one state.  Nothing in this contest compares.  For Trump to prevail he would have to somehow flip more than one state that he lost, and that's really impossible.  Not even a Supreme Court with three of his appointments can do that. 

The sad thing is that many Republican leaders, like Graham and McConnell, are either saying nothing or encouraging Trump's legal actions.  So, far, only four Republican Senators have publicly endorsed Biden's victory.  I imagine that this has more to do with elected Republicans fearing to cross Trump and his vice like hold on the Republican voters than it does any actual belief that he will prevail.  To Republican officials, supporting Trump even  as he says foolish or awful things has become reflexive in the past four years.  Siding with him yet again is nothing new for them.

 In many ways, Trump's refusal to accept the election results is laughable, as he continues to think that the world works only by his rules.  But it is important to consider just how despicable he is being here.   No president in the history of this country has attacked a perfectly legitimate election result before.  Nixon's corruption didn't even come close. His actions are an insult to the entire idea of democracy, not to mention the constitution. Trump is calling for nothing less than a coup. Even if it is a failed one. it's still simply terrible that our nation has a president trying something so extreme.  Hopefully, America will never sink to the level of Trump ever again.

2020, THE GOOD AND THE BAD

 

It is official's now:  Joe Biden has won the state of Pennsylvania, earning him the presidency.  Current President Donald Trump, who absurdly tried to claim victory before all the votes were counted two days ago, can scream and try to sue, but there is no path to victory for him.  Already the  legal challenges he has tried to make are  failing in different courts. Put simply, this election wasn't close enough for him to cheat.   Despite his  party's attempts to suppress the vote, or his attempt  to sabotage the post office to gum up mail in votes, there was just too much voter turnout, both in person and by mail, for him to pull off another upset.

First, the good news.  Despite the fears of many Americans, this election went as smoothly as possible.  There were no riots or violent confrontations, no Proud Boys intimidating voters of color.  The feared Civil War didn't arrive. And, despite the pandemic, the turnout was historically large, with over one hundred and fifty million votes cast.  That puts the turnout rate at around sixty six percent, the largest number since the year nineteen hundred.

And, of course, by rejecting Trump the country has rejected the corruption, lies and bigotry that he has displayed in the last four years.  Trump now enters the list of one term presidents, the first to lose since nineteen ninety two.  If he had won another term, American democracy as we know it would have been seriously changed for the worse; instead we have a return to normalcy, with a president who is a decent, good natured man.  And of course, with Vice President Kamala Harris the country will have its first female vice president who is also a person of color.   

But this election wasn't perfect; first of all, Donald Trump outperformed all the polls and came closer to winning than was predicted.  In fact, he got more votes this time than he did in the last election, coming in at around seventy million votes.  (Biden came in at around seventy four).   And all the things that drove his unlikely campaign to victory four years ago, the racism and xenophobia,  are still driving forces for many of those seventy million people.

And it appears that the Democrats will not win a majority in the Senate and lose a few seats in the House of Representatives.  Without the Senate, the Republican party will be able to do to Biden what they did to Barack Obama, which is to filibuster and block nearly every part of his agenda.  This will become a real uphill battle for President Biden in the next four years.  But there is still much that the president can do without congress, and so Biden will be able to reverse many of the terrible things that Trump has done in the past four years.  Like I said, there will be battles once Biden is inaugurated, but right now I'm too happy to care.  This is a great moment for the country and the world, and I want to savour it. 

A NAIL BITER

 I always knew that there was a possibility that Donald Trump could win reelection; that despite his horrible response to the pandemic and his brutish behavior during the first debate, he could pull off another Electoral College win.  And here we are, at four AM PST with no winner yet declared.

Every poll seemed to show that there was a blue wave coming, with Biden  leading in both national and swing states polls.  But the wave seems to have dried up; Florida went for Trump, along with South Carolina.  And Texas,  the prize that Democrats have been wishing for in the past few cycles, stayed red again.

Still, this is not to say that Biden doesn't have a chance, he's currently leading in the Electoral College, with millions of votes to be counted in Nevada, Arizona,Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. It's just depressing that the race is close at all.  Once again, Trump's ability to channel the angers and fears of millions of white voters seems to be working. 

Even if Trump does win, he will become the first president in history to lose the popular vote twice (he's currently down in the popular vote by around two million, with little to no chance of his making that number up), displaying what an absolute joke of a democracy our country has become.  And it may get worse, with a conservative Supreme Court sure to uphold whatever voting limitations Republicans put it place in the future.

In typical Trump fashion, he has already claimed that he has won and the vote counting should end.  This is, of course, insane, but nearly every public statement this man has made in the past four years is either dishonest or crazy, so that's no surprise.  The good news is that there appears to be no way that Trump can just end the vote counting, even by going to the Supreme Court.

Still, I feel utterly ashamed and embarrassed that Trump didn't lose in a blowout last night.  I am just completely incapable of understanding how anyone could vote for such a corrupt bigot.  I recently wrote that our president's terrible handling of the pandemic made me ashamed to be an American.  Even if Joe Biden does prevail, last night's vote counts still fill me with shame.  

THE NATION'S FUTURE

I hate to be hyperbolic, but the next two days could be completely game changing for the future of our country.  While every presidential election is, of course, important, this one is especially significant.  The best case scenario is obvious: Joe Biden wins the presidency by a wide margin, with most of the swing states going his way.  President Trump would almost definitely try to cry foul, but if Biden's victory is a landslide, even the Republican party that has meekly supported or ignored every insane tweet or statement the President has made in the past four years would have to concede.  And then, on January twentieth Trump would step down and Biden would begin the job of repairing the country's image.  And while the danger of violence on the part of some of Trump's supporters is possible, I think for the most part they would just retreat back into the corner they held during the Obama years. Sanity would return, and Biden would be a safe, dull president.

It's the other alternatives to a Biden landslide that get frightening: although Biden's lead looks strong, it's entirely possible that Trump could still eke out a victory.   While it appears that Trump can't possibly win the popular vote, he could once again get just the right number of votes in the right number of states to pull out a win in the Electoral College.  If that proves to be the case, he would be the first president in history to lose the popular vote twice and still serve two terms.  Even worse, it would be a slap to the face once again to the majority of voters.  It would somehow mean that the Republican party, who have had only one presidential candidate win the popular vote in this century (George W Bush in two thousand and four), would hold the White House for another term.  Even worse, it would mean an extension of the extremist policies of the past four years, with the revitalized Trump administration going even harder against immigration and environmental degradation.  In out deeply divided country, there is often talk of some kind of division, with states splitting off somehow from the rest of the country.  While most of this seems crazy, if Donald Trump does pull off another win tomorrow, it is understandable that the people who live in a blue state like California might wonder why it needs to be anchored to a country that constantly seems at odds with their values.  While I don't see such a separation happening, I am sympathetic to the appeal of it to people who see a corrupt, extremist right wing president hold power despite being opposed by a majority of the voters.

Another nightmare scenario is that Biden at first appears to be losing in swing states, and then starts to pull ahead as mail in votes are counted.  Trump has repeatedly made unfounded claims of possible widespread voter fraud going against him from mail in voting.  It is entirely possible that he may declare an early victory in those states before the votes are all counted, and then scream fraud when those late votes go against him.  This could lead to lawsuits and counter lawsuits on whether those votes should be counted.  The ensuing legal mess could wind up at the Supreme Court (three of whom are Trump appointees), which could result in Trump winning a completely corrupt  election entirely through legal machinations.  This would essentially bring an  end to democracy in this country, making us no better than a third world dictatorship.   Trump would become the full on fascist leader that he's always wanted to be, and knowing him, would start working on appointing himself leader for life.  The upswell of anger from the people at this could result in real violence, with both the right and the left energized and enraged.  While I think a full on civil war is highly unlikely in such a scenario, the fury at the utter corruption that Trump may bring to maintain power means that it is possible.

Donald Trump has spent the last four years basically testing the limits of the presidency seeing how much he can get away with: from refusing to release his taxes, to running businesses while in office, from appointing unqualified family members to important positions of power, to pardoning former campaign advisor Roger Stone for crimes that Stone committed on Trump's behalf (a move that the New York Times said pushed him beyond Richard Nixon's level of corruption).  And time and time again he has gotten away with things no modern president has ever dared to try.  Stealing a close election would just be the icing on the cake for an egotistical psychopath like our president.  Here's hoping that he can't.  

A WILD FINISH

 In early August of this year (which feels like ten months ago!) I wrote that I was feeling cautiously optimistic about the upcoming presidential election.  And now, with only around two weeks to go before before that big day, I'm feeling a little less cautious.

The funny thing is that, with everything that has happened in the last two months, the polls have hardly budged.  Joe Biden has consistently been running a lead of around ten points nationally over President Trump, and Biden also leads in most of the important swing states.  Amazingly, this is basically the same lead that he had way back in the Democratic primaries!  Biden has even out performed the president in campaign donations, a rarity for a presidential challenger.

The televised debate between Trump and Biden back in September was a chance for Trump to dig himself out of the hole he's in, and not only did he not win, he may have dug himself in deeper.  Instead of looking presidential, Trump displayed his true character as a bragging, insulting, dishonest bully.  Only Trump himself and his loyal base thought that he did well.

And when Trump revealed that he  had tested  positive for Covid 19, he received no sympathy bounce.  If anything, his own infection seemed to personify his failure to slow down the pandemic.  And that is what has been hurting him politically more than anything else; the president may have survived  his bout with Covid 19, but it could still drag down his presidency. 

The problem for Trump is obvious: the pandemic was a serious problem that required a sober, consistent, well thought out response from him based on information from scientific researchers and other experts.  In other words, the complete opposite of the chaotic style of governance that Trump had brought to the White House from the very beginning.  The fact that he dismissed the dangers of the outbreak, and then often ridiculed masks while often contradicting the advice of his own scientific advisors shows just what a mess he has made of this crisis.

And it appears that Trump's flailing attempts to dig up some kind of October surprise (from pressuring his Attorney General William Barr to arrest Joe Biden and Barack Obama for some vague and absurd crime to his refusal to disavow Qanon)  are failing because it's hard to distract the American public when they know that the pandemic is still raging, with almost two hundred and twenty thousand Americans dead as of this writing.  It looks like, for the first time in his life, Trump has been confronted with a problem that he can't sue, ignore or insult away.  And while I'm sure that he will attempt to deny the results of the election if he loses, Biden's lead seems strong enough to dispel that denial.  Like I said before, I'm cautiously optimistic about the election, and hopefully in  few months America will have a decent and admirable leader again.

NOTHING LEARNED

 

A brush with death can change a person.  A brush with death caused by something that you've actively ignored can really change a person.  Except, that is, for our president.  Donald Trump's reaction to his recent covid scare has been a return to displaying all the negative behaviors that he had before he fell ill, all of which helped  put the country at the top of the list world wide for the highest number of covid cases and deaths.

Even before he left the hospital, Trump was downplaying his condition.  In one of the oddest moments in presidential history, he got into his official presidential vehicle and waved to supporters outside the hospital he was in.  While this was a typical display of  macho toughness from him, it also showed a complete disregard for his driver and the security agent in the vehicle with him, who were forced to be in close quarters with a known contagious person just so he could get his silly little photo op.

And the foolish behavior from the president didn't end there; one of the first things he did after being discharged from the hospital was to dramatically walk up the steps of the capitol dome and tear off his mask, acting like a septuagenarian Superman. And his tweets were absurd: "Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life." He said, ignoring the fact that over two hundred thousand Americans had died from the virus.  He also added that "We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge."  Not only is this yet another absurd boast from him, but it downplays the reality of  the nature of his medical care.  As president, Trump is, of course, given the best possible medical treatment from an army of doctors.  The vast majority of Americans could never get the same kind of treatment that he received.  For him to hold himself up as some sort of macho, coronavirus beating tough guy is an insult to those who have died, implying that they were just too weak to survive.  As always, Trump has zero compassion for anyone but himself in everything he does, even when recovering from an illness.

This all gets even more appalling when one considers that it isn't just the president himself that has been infected, but also many of the people around him: so far fourteen people, including First Lady Melania Trump,  Senior Advisor Stephen Miller, and Aide to the President Hope Hicks, along with three Republican Senators.  And yet he still steams ahead with downplaying the virus, like a pandemic hitting the White House and Congress is somehow nothing to worry about.  (And really, is there any greater indicator of what a psychopath our president is than the fact that his own wife's infection seems to have stirred no sense of compassion in him?).  Yes, sadly, Trump will always be Trump, never admitting to any mistake or course correcting in any way.  From day one he has downplayed the danger of this pandemic, and months later, with millions of Americans infected and hundreds of thousands dead, he still chooses to do so.  All we can do as a country is vote him out in such large numbers that he and his party won't be able to steal the election.  Expecting him to ever do the right thing regarding this pandemic is fruitless.

THE PRESIDENT TESTS POSITIVE

“the end of the pandemic is in sight....”

The above words are a direct quote from Donald Trump from remarks he gave on Thursday October First.  He said them even after his close advisor Hope Hicks was showing signs of the virus herself.  And then he and his wife Melania tested positive themselves.

Although the irony of a president who has bungled the pandemic response so thoroughly getting the virus himself is not lost on me, I take no pleasure is his condition.  Sure, I've used words like "fascist", "bigot" and "psychopath" to describe him,  but I'm also a progressive who has argued against the death penalty.  I truly hope that Trump recovers, loses the election next month, and eventually winds up in the jail cell I think he deserves to be in.

But I can't feel any real sympathy for his sickness.  I just can't.  My reaction is much like how I felt when Rush Limbaugh recently came down with lung cancer after years of  publicly denying the risks of tobacco usage on his show and constantly smoking cigars.  He should have seen it coming.

A list of all the times that Trump downplayed the coronavirus threat could fill an encyclopedia: from the beginning he said it was nothing to worry about, that it would disappear when the weather got warmer, that the country needed to reopen, that masks were unnecessary.  He often has contradicted his own administration's advice, and insulted  his own advisors when they disagreed with him.  And perhaps worst of all, he has held indoor rallies without mandatory mask wearing.  Even after one of his supporters, Herman Cain, attended one of those rallies and died from the virus shortly afterwards, he didn't stop.  Given all of this, I can't say that I feel sorry for our president.

If there is one good thing that could come out of this, it's that it may push his supporters into realizing just how serious this pandemic is.  Hopefully, people will start wearing masks without complaint and listen to scientists instead of getting caught up in the crazy conspiracy theories running around the virus.   And who knows how this will affect the already unreal upcoming election.  Assuming Trump recovers, will this prove to voters just how disastrous his pandemic response has been?  Or will it garner him a sympathy vote?  How much will Mike Pence have to step in, and will that help or hurt Trump's campaign?  The only thing we know for sure is that twenty twenty is continuing to be the craziest year in  modern history, and the results of that craziness can't be seen right now.