The Banana Republican

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.) 

At 2:30 this morning, Donald Trump took his place behind a podium in the East Room of the White House (Instead of a hotel ballroom as most politician would do who'd heard of the 1939 Hatch Act), about a dozen flaccid American flags behind him as if to remind him what country's presidency he was running for, and pronounced himself the winner.

    In an authoritarian speech the likes of which not having been seen since the height of Mussolini's power, Trump fumed, whined, fulminated and lied about the election results as he saw them in his funhouse mirror of a mind. It was a summation of all the threats, falsehoods and conspiracy theories he's been advancing these last several months: The Democrat Party is stealing the election. Ballots are being tossed. Ballots are being added. I was winning (Despite trailing in both the popular vote count and, for almost the entire evening, the Electoral College) then they called the election off. Stop voting (The polls were closed hours before Trump took the podium)! Stop counting!

     Yes, "If we do fewer tests, there will be fewer cases!" last night got turned into, "If they count fewer mail in ballots then Biden gets fewer votes!" All that was needed was Trump claiming victory in Guam, Puerto Rico, Wake Island and Hong Kong ("They love me there!").

    There was something Banana Republican about Trump prematurely ejaculating about winning the election from behind a gated and walled-off White House when he'd been trailing in the Electoral College all night. Even Trump's diehard supporters were unimpressed. Ben Shapiro, of all people, claimed Trump declaring victory last night was "deeply irresponsible."

     We all knew Trump would do this, proudly crowing  like a rooster on a dunghill hours before dawn. Keith Olbermann predicted it to the last detail and he was right. And, although he had no control over his own election any more than he had over his own campaign, Trump called for a stop to the ballot counting to preserve a lead he never had. Specifically, he was demanding a stop to the ballot counting of heavily African American districts such as Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit) and Atlanta (also predominantly African American). At this time, those votes still hadn't been counted.

     But in his naked, raving lust to cling to power for four more years, he would have been quite happy to disenfranchise many hundreds of thousands of African American voters. So much for his Abraham Lincoln pretensions.

     According to the NY Times' electoral map, Vice President Biden leads the Electoral College with 253 Electors while Trump has 214. Biden is currently leading in Nevada and Arizona, which CNN and the Times have called for him, 17 shy of winning the White House. North Carolina and Georgia are still in play and elections officials in Pennsylvania still have massive amounts of mail in ballots to count (PA as with Michigan and Wisconsin, was forbidden from counting absentee ballots prior to Election Day, as opposed to Massachusetts, which was able to begin the count on October 25th). 

     So, the Keystone State is still very much in play, especially as many of those ballots came from more liberal voting regions such as Harrisburg and Philadelphia. This means if Biden wins Nevada and Arizona  with its 17 combined electoral votes, those and Biden's current haul of 253 will give him the 270 he needs to win the presidency. And that's without Georgia, North Carolina and his home state of Pennsylvania which are, again, still very much in play.

At Least They Legalized Pot in Five States!

All auguries were of good fortune. It seemed everyone and his cat went out yesterday to vote against Trump. We made the mistake of listening to the grand poobahs of the punditacracy, the Charlie Cooks and James Carvilles (The usually reliable Cook promised us last night Democrats could take 4-7 Senate seats, although that's looking unlikely, and Carville staked his reputation on Biden winning his native Georgia, which is problematic, at best). The Blunami turned into a weak tide coming in lapping at our toes. After this election season and 2020 in general, maybe it's a good thing five states legalized medical marijuana last night. 

     The way it looks now, Democrats will not take any more than a two seat lead in the Senate and that's if they run the table for the last five contested seats (The GOP currently leads 48-47). Democrats similarly underperformed in the House with the party that had held a commanding 40 seat lead two years ago now having an anemic 16 seat majority with 43 seats contested. Of course, any races that had been called for Republicans last night and today could easily flip to the Democrats once the absentee ballots are fully counted but I wouldn't count on that changing much if anything.

     Those punditocracy poobahs also informed us the Democrats could expand their lead in the House by up to 10 or even 15 seats. Instead, it looks as if Democrats will lose 10-15 seats in the lower chamber (They currently lead 204-188). So even if Biden gets elected, he could easily face a Nazi Congress that will oppose any initiative he proposes.

     The news gets worse. Yes, Cory Gardner lost his race in Colorado as did Martha McSally in Arizona. But those other "vulnerable" Republicans? Moscow Mitch, Miss Lindsey, Susan Collins and Thom Tillis all easily won their races, illustrating yet again the age-old platitude, "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers."

     And, with Democratic control of the Senate in very serious doubt, we wouldn't even have the tepid consolation of McConnell getting demoted to Minority Leader and Graham knocked down to ranking member on the Judiciary Committee.

     So, best case scenario is another divided Congress, most likely retaining a diminished lead in the lower chamber, and a right wing Senate bound and determined to block Biden's every policy and initiative. I thought we were better than this. I'd hoped we were better than this. Once again, I was wrong. 67,289,551 still voted for Trump, about 4,000,000 greater than four years ago, knowing full well what he'd done and said because they put party over country. 

     Little had changed since 2016. Trump had not flipped a single state and had even lost several, WI, MI and likely AZ the first two of which flipping to Biden. Once again, the pollsters were wrong and like Charlie Brown we're flat on our back on the grass wondering how this could happen yet again. And if four years of constant sledgehammering at our democracy by what is by far the most fascist world leader today isn't enough to get enough of us out to expel the Republican Party that made this fascist dictatorship possible, then perhaps we don't have a democracy left to save.