November 3, 2020 Election Day in the United States of America
The Democratic Wannabes
Four more years of DJT?
Three and a half years ago the Democrats wanted to impeach Donald J. Trump. Nothing has changed since. He continues to employ his 2016 race for the Whitehouse with the phrase 'Make America Great Again.' CNN has favoured Joe Biden, FOX has waved Trump's flag for more than four years. The coverage is 24/7 too. The Democrats and the Republicans have hurled every possible stone on to the Discontent Rock-pile in favour of their choice of government until a killing or major news event like Covid-19 momentarily captured the public's attention. The Opinion-laden News along with the newly created Fake News was top of mind for most of us. Book after book was written and published denigrating Donald J. Trump. The writers are former employees, former lawyers, current relatives, biographers and soldiers who bared all to reveal their truth about the idiot, fornicator, con man and cheat who was Donald J. Trump. I know of one book written by Conrad Black in 2016 that had semi-veiled kudos for this man who thinks he is the second coming. [At the very least you now know what side of the fence I'm on.]
After a long day and night (November 3, 2020) of voting and analysis the results of the election are unknown. Biden or Trump (by their current counted votes) did not represent the clear and definite president of the population (328,200,000 as of 2018) of the USA. Sports heroes Bobby Orr and Jack Nicklaus had supported Trump, while Bloomberg and Jake Tapper supported Biden. The Electoral College requires 270 votes to elect the president and neither candidate was holding that magic number.
People who are closest to me say they can't understand how anyone could vote for Trump: he is a con man, a cheat, a liar and so many other less than desirable traits that it is a mystery that may not go away any time soon. I read the following which might explain this phenomenon regarding our American population, "The fact that the leader of one of our two parties … was not ashamed to reveal his own selfishness, was not ashamed to reveal his own indifference to the suffering of others, was not even ashamed to reveal his own cheerful enjoyment of cruelty … all of this helped people to feel that they no longer needed to be ashamed of those qualities in themselves either. They didn’t need to feel bad because they didn’t care about other people. … In a world in which the rich want permission to take as much as they can get without feeling any shame, and many of the not-rich are so worried about their own sinking fortunes that they find it hard to worry about the misery of anyone else, Trump is the priest who grants absolution. In a way, he seems to be telling his followers that perhaps compassion is just one more value of the elite culture that he and they hate, like speaking in long sentences and listening to classical music."
I have heard countless elected politicians declare simple words like now that the election is over I will represent all Americans no matter your political persuasion. The political climate today appears that the tie that binds is shredding and about to break. If Trump wins another four years it will break; if Biden wins there is a chance that a new rope can be weaved into the one that built this great nation. It will need all the help it can get.
This is a comment authored by Sarah Kendzior and published November 4, 2020: "The United States is a broken country and a heartbreaking place to live. Dangerous times are coming, full of disease, violence and instability – regardless who wins. A second Trump term will likely lead to entrenched authoritarianism. A Biden term will likely bring chaos as the country attempts to rebuild. In either case, we will live under a pandemic in a decimated economy. I wouldn’t wish the pain of the next few months on anyone, including those who voted for Mr. Trump. We will live, and die, as Americans, one nation, united in fear – of each other, of our government, of our future. Pundits focus on the partisanship, but there are worse things to lose than an election. Americans learned that the hard way."
I'm writing on November 6, 2020 at 09:45 and the results are undecided. Neither man has conceded to the other and to the electorate. There is no doubt about the animosity created amongst the American public. One side had hoped for a landslide victory with the other simply wanting to hold the power of the Whitehouse, Senate and Supreme Court. You see without a landslide victory for Biden's Democrats half the population are claiming the so-called Democratic election was rigged, crooked and unjust enough to have the Supreme Court decide who will govern for the next four years.
Others have thought and written the following, "The real winner in all this is clear. It’s Donald Trump, and everyone who thinks like him. Even if he loses the election, even if he goes to jail, he won. He figured out what America really wants. He delivers it on demand, 24–7. Donald Trump Remade America in His Image. There’s a small chance Trump will lose when all the mail-in ballots are counted. It still doesn’t matter. A simple victory wasn’t enough this time.
We needed a landslide over Trump, in order to reject everything he and his party stand for. We needed to send a message loud and clear that his cruelty and lack of compassion had no place in twenty-first-century America. We missed that shot by a mile. Instead we’re getting a cage fight that legitimizes Trump’s first four years in office, and how he got there.
Turns out, a lot of Americans were like Trump on the inside. They were selfish and arrogant. They were lazy and judgmental. They were racist and homophobic. They were loud and aggressive. They were waiting for someone to give them permission to show it."
And here's another thought that resonates for me, "Trump, of course, won’t go quietly. He will use his last days in office to wreak as much havoc as he can. He may even take a stab at pardoning himself to avoid prosecution after he leaves office.
Once Trump leaves office, he will be gone from the White House but he will not be gone from the national scene. He will move to Mar-a-Lago and set up a shadow government. Remember, he told his followers that the only way he could lose was if the election was rigged. He will claim to be the legitimate president while urging his supporters to refuse to recognize the Biden administration in DC. There will be chaos.
Some have speculated that Trump ran for president in 2016 as a publicity stunt. He wanted to start a TV network and figured that running for president would give him great exposure as well as drum up support for his new media venture. Can you imagine him on his own TV network spewing hatred and conspiracy theories? Urging violence? His supporters have been living in a bubble created by Fox News which has not always toed the line.
With complete control of a Trump network, Trump could control the information to his supporters. He could create a literal alternate reality. His instruction in 2018 to his supporters not to believe anything that they see or hear and listen only to him will become reality. We could end up with two centres of power, the White House and Mar-a-Lago, each claiming to be the legitimate government. Our country may fracture and break into two."
What do you think of the commentary included above? Pretty scary stuff isn't it?
For me I'm closing and posting this argument and making ready to play golf during this magnificent day in the GTA where the temperature will hit 18C today, with the next five days hovering between 17C and 20C for the high temperature. When I return to this post there will be an official result, or will there be?
November 7, 2020
It's 12:30 and I'm thrilled to see and read that the counts and recounts have completed and Joe Biden is the President-elect. And without any surprise to either the GOP and the Democrats Donald J. Trump has not and most probably will not concede.
This is the headline from The Atlantic:
"The 2020 election is over. Now the hard part begins."
Biden is the man for the job. He can salve the nation’s wounds. “After the destruction of the Trump era, the nation is desperate for a parental figure to cultivate renewal amid ruin,” Franklin Foer argues.
His election is cause for celebration, Yascha Mounk argues: “America stopped an authoritarian populist from destroying its democratic institutions.”
"Kamala Harris did it. Despite the barriers, despite the pain, she becomes the first woman, the first Asian American, and the first Black American to be elected vice president," Jemele Hill has written.
Enough said and written on this 2020 USA Election for the President's job. Now in Ronald Reagan's words, "Let's get to work."
NEWS FLASH on January 6, 2021 an angry mob, after being stirred up by Donald Trump on the street outside the Whitehouse, have stormed the Capital Building where Vice-President Pence is about to ratify the election of Joe Biden to the Presidency. You see, Trump has spent three months and a hell of a lot of other people's time and money denying the validity of the 2020 Presidential Election. The last straw is his final effort to overturn it: his supporters worked up enough hate to bash doors and break windows and rush into the Capital yelling 'Where is Pence? Where are you Nancy?' 'We're here to defend Democracy', as they were screaming, swinging baseball bats and brandishing guns and other attack instruments. This action resulted in six people dead.
The next week Donald J Trump was impeached for the second time in his four year term.
Unfortunately the Senate would not impeach because their ruling would come into effect after January 20, 2021 when Trump was no longer President. [A technicality that the Republican Mitch McConnell created when he held up the decision to meet and deal with the impeachment.]
It's over now and Joe Biden has been President for a month and it looks like a professional instead of a gameshow, conman, coward and bully is running the show from Washington.
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