Final Thoughts on the Election

It’s been nearly two weeks and I’m hoping to put this election to bed now, even if the squatter regime in the White House and its deluded supporters continue to argue otherwise. It’s time to move on. But here are some final thoughts.

1. So far it looks like der Sturmtrumper’s attempts to overthrow the US government and install himself as our permanent tribune have been handled as competently and effectively as everything else he’s attempted (how’s that wall going? Mexico pay for any of it yet?) which is perhaps the only saving grace of his entire regime. The next Fascist will be more talented, and if we don’t take steps to make sure that such human refuse is never allowed near power in this country again we may not get a chance to vote them out.

2. We have never had a sitting president refuse to recognize the legitimate and obvious results of an election before, and if that doesn’t worry you then you’re not thinking clearly. He will be gone in January, but he can do a lot of damage in the meantime – not least by encouraging the same kind of dead-end fanaticism that we still see in pockets of the former Confederacy more than a century and a half after that moral and political skidmark was cleansed from the surface of the earth. It took this country decades to pacify the die-hards after the Civil War and if we’re not careful we’ll end up back in that situation again.

3. He’s never going to concede, you know that. He’s not that connected to reality. He can’t handle anything less than sycophantic adoration. And in three months he will be facing a list of state charges that he can’t pardon or bully his way out of. He can’t afford to concede. Fortunately he doesn’t have to. At 12:01pm on January 20, 2021 he becomes just another trespasser in the White House and can be removed by the Secret Service – bodily if necessary. I suspect it won’t come to that, but I won’t lie and say I wouldn’t pay money to see it if it did.

4. I love the fact that it says right on the donation web site that any money sent to the “legal fund” that der Sturmtrumper is supposedly going to use to overturn the will of the American people actually goes into his campaign coffers to pay off debts. And people are still donating! Trump supporters make the best marks. Not only are they fully aware they’re being conned, they’re proud of it.

5. A few facts for the die-hards:

Joe Biden won this election by over five million votes. The last time a Republican did that was 1988. Democrats have done that four times since then (1992, 1996, 2008, and now 2020) and missed the clean sweep in 2012 by less than 19,000 votes.

The Republican candidate has won the popular vote exactly once in the last thirty years, when George W. Bush did it in 2004. It is literally a once-in-a-generation event for a Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote. The only realistic hope a Republican has of winning the presidency is by gaming the Electoral College, which is why they will never agree to change it. They are a minority party, and their accelerating slide toward authoritarianism reflects that.

Joe Biden won 306 electoral votes, which is precisely as many as der Sturmtrumper won in 2016 except that Biden also (see above) won the popular vote.

Der Sturmtrumper is the first president since Benjamin Harrison in 1888 to lose the popular vote twice and still manage to serve a term in office. John Quincy Adams also managed that feat in 1828. All of these presidents were one-term failures.

The Department of Homeland Security has publicly stated that there was no significant voter fraud and that this was the most secure election in American history. A team of international observers invited by the State Department said the same thing, and every state government – Republican and Democrat – has agreed. Der Sturmtrumper can take it up with them.

6. Yes, I’m enjoying his humiliation. Of course I am. I can be petty too. For four miserable years der Sturmtrumper has run roughshod over everything that makes the United States worthwhile. I have watched my country weakened, corrupted, coarsened, and made pitiable by the callous cruelty, shortsighted stupidity, open graft, and destructively subversive actions of this criminal regime and every fiber of my being rejoices to see this regime come crashing down and a decent, law-abiding administration stand ready to take over, and if one of the side effects of this is watching the abject humiliation of a terrible person and a worse administration then I guess I’m okay with that. I'm not proud of that, but I won't deny it.

7. Apparently there was a “Million MAGA March” this weekend that fell short by a scant 950,000 or so participants, which amuses me no end.

8. Seriously – I want to know who at Four Seasons Total Landscaping answered the phone when der Sturmtrumper’s minions called to set up a press conference in their parking lot and thought, “Fuck it, why not” and then told them to go ahead and set it up. Give that person a cigar.

9. You know what I really want? I want politics to be boring again. I want a president who isn’t a criminal and an attention whore and won’t be in my face all the time with damn fool ideas or destructive urges. I want a government I can ignore for days on end, secure in the knowledge that the grownups are in charge. It’s been four long years since that happened, and I’m looking forward to it again.