The 2020 election; a few observations
I’ve got a friend who I suspect voted for Donald Trump and if she did I’ve asked her to do us both a big favor and lie about it.
This last election was a test of our friendship and we had to do a lot of talking to work our way through it, but so far I think we made it. We’ll see what happens when Trump has to be shot with a tranquilizer dart and carried out of the Oval Office.
Anyway…
She recently read a comment on social media that said anyone who voted for Trump was a racist, misogynist, devil worshipper (I made up the devil-worshipper thing because I couldn’t remember the entire list of bad stuff voting for Trump made you) and my friend didn’t think she was any of those things.
Let’s get this out of the way.
A lot of people voted for Trump because they share his points of view on race and science and women and those people are knuckleheads. You could spot them by their MAGA hats, lack of face masks and willingness to show up at Trump rallies and do a mass taste-test of a new flavor of Kool-Aid if their hero asked them to. Those Trump supporters are probably a lost cause.
But there are reasons a person could vote for Trump that don’t include agreeing with every dumbass thing the guy said or did.
I voted for Joe Biden, but that doesn’t mean I agree with every single thing Biden ever said or did or will ever say or do. In my mind, Biden was just the best option available among some very limited options and some Trump voters might feel the same way.
Before the election I read a story about undecided voters who found Trump a loathsome human being, but didn’t like Biden’s policies – a predicament which seems entirely possible.
Let’s say you need to get back to work to pay your bills, but you think Biden is going shut down the economy again; you might hold your nose and vote for Trump. Over the weekend I read a story in the Kansas City Star about Latino voters who went for Trump based on jobs and the economy and here’s a quote from it:
“The emerging Latino vote is going to have some deeply populist economic tendencies,” said Mike Madrid, a California-based strategist and former Republican who is part of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “They're not listening to the vulgarity; they're not on Twitter. They just want to go and do their jobs.”
The Democratic party has largely abandoned blue-collar workers – read Listen, Liberal by Thomas Frank if you want to know more about that – and maybe Trump’s economic policies (or at least the economic policies someone had to explain to Trump and get him to endorse between rounds of golf) make more sense to you, so you overlook the cultural stuff and vote your pocketbook.
OK, enough being fair and seeing the other person’s point of view.
Moving on.
Trump claims fraud; put up or shut up…although shutting up isn’t likely
Last Friday I drew the cartoon posted above because Donald Trump made some claims about getting cheated out of the presidency last Thursday night. Those claims were easily and quickly refuted, but last I heard Trump plans to start suing people this morning.
We’ve now entered the litigation phase of the election and as someone smarter than me pointed out, our political system relies heavily on people conceding they lost.
But conceding is not required so if you want to be a sore loser and a pain in the ass – and we’re talking Donald Trump here – you can demand a recount or go to court or say you want to settle things once and for all with a Steel Cage Death Match and while the first two sounds tedious, I gotta say that last one sounds pretty entertaining.
Count on Donald Trump to not make a graceful exit.
I don’t know if they’ll have to forcibly evict him from the Oval Office or he’ll quit before January 20th and take his golf clubs and go home or he’ll declare war on Pennsylvania, but all three seem like possibilities.
Also, there are rumors that Trump might try to give himself a pardon for all the stuff we don’t know about yet, but may get revealed in the future. (Sounds like a plot from a Terminator sequel; Trump from the past shows up to save the Trump from the future.)
Trump has promised to go to court to expose election fraud, but to win a court case you need some evidence (at least in theory) and so far Trump hasn’t provided any. In politics you can make claims without providing evidence — which Trump has done for four years — but in court, you need some proof. (Once again a theory I hope holds up.)
But even if his litigation fails – and that’s what most people predict – it allows Trump to walk away saying he got cheated and didn’t lose.
Either way, you might think Trump likes the spotlight too much to give it up entirely, so don’t be surprised if he winds up with his own talk show where he can throw out claims without evidence and tell America what female celebrities are overrated and which ones are hot and he could have sex with if he really wanted to.
I’d watch at least one episode of Trump’s talk show and record the Steel Cage Death Match for later viewing.
The popular vote
Last time I looked more than 75 million people voted for Joe Biden and more than 70 million voted for Donald Trump.
So do the math and Trump lost the popular vote in two elections by over 7 million votes and because of the screwed-up Electoral College system we use, was declared the winner in one race and came close in another.
And he thinks he got robbed.
Liberal bias
I had CNN on most of Saturday and once Biden was announced as the winner they didn’t have much news to talk about, so they started filling air time with speculation and personal opinions and gushing over Joe Biden and Kamala Harris like they just walked on water and were about to turn water into wine.
I know a lot of us are relieved to get rid of Donald Trump, but Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are still politicians and not 50% of the Fantastic Four and if you don’t get that reference you need to read more comic books.
Biden and Harris are politicians and they’ll do what politicians do, so maybe we shouldn’t anoint them as saviors of the universe just yet.
Although, when you see yard signs supporting “Any Functional Adult — 2020” you know Donald Trump has set the bar pretty low.
Celebrations without social distancing
If you’re gonna criticize Donald Trump for holding rallies without social distancing – and I did – you have to admit there wasn’t a helluva lot of social distancing going on during the anti-Trump celebrations.
It looked like World War II had just ended and according to Saturday Night Live (hey…these days they’re as credible as Fox News and CNN) they were ringing church bells in Paris to celebrate the end of the Trump presidency.
The CNN reporters covering the celebrations made it clear that people were not social distancing, but also pointed out most people were wearing masks, which help, but don’t totally prevent the spread of COVID-19.
And they don’t help at all if you pull them down and wear them around your neck.
A bunch of people who saw CNN cameras and wanted to get their faces on TV, pulled their masks down so friends at home could see their face and say, “Hey! Look! That’s Melissa helping spread the coronavirus!”
So give them credit: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are helping unify America – knuckleheads now come in red and blue.