At present, the GOP has initiated a massive train of voter disenfranchisement that has no breaks.
This is nothing like the 2000 presidential election. That event came down to a little over 500 Floridian votes for the Republican candidate, and nearly 547,400 more popular votes for the Democratic candidate nationwide. Our situation now is vastly different. We are talking about state leads in the tens of thousands for a Democratic candidate who is likely to have claimed 5 million more popular votes total. The scale of the GOP defiance is unprecedented. And, as far as I can see, there is no way to reverse or change course. Even before the terrific smash between Trump and Biden occurs, the damage has already been done.
Americans are now living in a country that is, in political terms, very new. All of these events—the reports from the White House, from GOP leaders, from the State Department—are nothing but shocking. Biden is trying to keep the appearance of a cool head, but inside he must be terrifically alarmed.
This old man, who has been in mainstream American politics for nearly half a century, has never seen anything like it. His conciliatory tone to the GOP only entered a void. The brazenness of his opponent is such that there is no going back to anything that can be considered normal, even if Biden obtains power. We have reached the point where the party system in the US has collapsed. And if you think otherwise, you are dreaming.
A reporter asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo if State Department is engaging with President-elect Biden’s transition team and if delays could harm a smooth transition.
“There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” Pompeo replied https://t.co/tqZz6RTuFG pic.twitter.com/dh5gBFesv6
— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 10, 2020
The truth is the GOP has been losing ground since Ronald Reagan, the party’s last truly popular leader. George W. Bush owed his popularity entirely to a terrorist action orchestrated by the son of a Saudi billionaire, Osama bin Laden. Remove that surprise attack, and he too would have been a one-term president.
Trump was the only direction that the alliance between the business class and the white religious freaks could go. He electrified the substance of the Republican party, and they showed up to vote like never before on November 3, 2020. Be impressed by his accomplishment: 73 million American votes. The best that any Republican has ever done. But there was just one problem. It was still not enough. Biden clobbered him in votes. In fact, if you remove all of the blockages the GOP laid out to repress the vote, Biden would have won by an even larger margin.
If the GOP’s greatest candidate could not even beat the Dems’ most humdrum one, then where was there to go but this thorn-acrid and muddy trench that the party finds itself in now? It has reached a point where tricks within limits are no longer even enough. The party must just make up shit wholesale. (What the fuck are “legal votes?” It certainly does not mean legal votes, because the reason one does not talk about legal votes is because it’s redundant to talk about legal votes.)
In short, the Dems beat the GOP’s best and most popular candidate. There are no other Trumps around. We are in for an ugly 2021.
By the way, this is part two of a post I wrote back in late September: “The Peaceful Transfer of Presidential Power Will Be a Long Shot.”
The post’s opening:
The biggest joke today is that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised ‘the peaceful transfer of power if Trump loses the Nov. 3 presidential election.’
The problem is very recent experiences have undoubtably shown that a promise from McConnell is, to the use the words of a character in Charles Burnett’s film, To Sleep with Anger, “…not worth the salt you put in greens.” Whatever McConnell says can be ignored.
