It's not over 'til it's over and it may never be over
Seems to me that every few days Donald Trump will lose a lawsuit or a vote recount or a game of paper, scissors, rock and then some genius in the media will announce that’s it – Trump’s attempt to overturn the election is finally over.
Then Trump will rise out of the grave like a Walking Dead zombie with a Twitter account and challenge some new thing that nobody ever thought to question before and I’m pretty sure this chain of events will keep happening up until January 20th, when a SWAT team or a pest removal company will have to forcibly remove Trump from the Oval Office. Which would actually be pretty entertaining to watch so if it happens, let’s hope they livestream that event.
Anyway…
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Trump’s re-election team is now headed back to the U.S. Supreme Court and this time they want the court to overturn several decisions made by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that the Trumpers claim violate the U.S. Constitution – a document they suddenly care about deeply.
And if that doesn’t work out, declaring martial law has apparently been discussed in a White House screaming match between a tag team of Looney-Tunes lawyer Sidney Powell and former national security adviser Michael Flynn versus Trump staffers who haven’t completely lost their minds and it’s nice to know there are some of those left.
Apparently, nobody knows if Trump endorsed the martial law idea, but our Tweeter-in-Chief dismissed the discussion of martial law as “fake news” and why would anybody question the veracity of guy who told us the coronavirus was going to disappear like a miracle.
So there’s that.
If you didn’t have anything better to do – like be president during a pandemic and a Russian cyberattack – and had unlimited access to lawyers you could make an issue out of just about anything.
Let’s say you don’t want to pay your credit card bill.
You could ask for a recount of what you spent, accuse the people who make those machines that read your credit card of falsifying numbers or say it was actually Hugo Chavez who came back from the dead and dropped by Nebraska Furniture Mart to buy that Lay-Z-Boy that somehow mysteriously appeared in front of the flat-screen TV some other dead person bought at Best Buy.
As long as you’ve got lawyers, money and nothing better to do, the possibilities are endless.
This would all be somewhat entertaining if it didn’t threaten democracy, because as someone on my TV pointed out the other night, Trump’s desperation-fueled antics aren’t working because Joe Biden won convincingly.
But what if the next election is close?
Then all it would take is one overly-partisan election official or some judge with a loose screw (a description that comes uncomfortably close to home) to throw out election results and then all bets are off, up is down, black is white, cats marry dogs and we’d live in a society that Mad Max would recognize and thrive in.
The point being…and I’m pretty sure I will eventually have a point…the Republicans who are enabling Trump’s schemes by not calling bullshit are endangering the democracy they claim to love.
After seeing what Donald Trump has gotten away with, why would any candidate ever concede anything again?
One of the tricks up a political cartoonist’s sleeve is taking an event and changing the setting, which can show how ridiculous the original event actually was. Here I have a defeated football player challenging the score, but I also considered having the football player argue the length of the field…or how long each quarter should last…or the qualifications of the scoreboard manufacturer.
The point being you can challenge pretty much anything if you want to, but football games – and elections – go much more smoothly if everybody accepts certain norms.
After the Electoral College confirmed Joe Biden’s victory, that ripe banana of human being – Mitch McConnell – finally admitted Biden won and various news sources who apparently haven’t learned a thing said, that’s it — it’s over.
But if getting the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the decisions made by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court doesn’t work, now there’s an idea being floated that maybe Republicans in Congress will try to throw a wrench in the works when they gather on January 6th to confirm what the Electoral College did.
“It’s not over ‘til it’s over” has never been more accurate and it looks like the three-ring circus we’re now watching won’t be over until January 20th and even then, don’t expect Donald Trump to shut the hell up because that does not appear to be on the list of options.
Stay tuned.