I am still operating on one eye and am adapting to being a cyclops. The good news is that, after two trips to the ophthalmologist, it does not appear that there is a retinal tear, however, I have experienced what is known as a vitreous hemorrhage. This has resulted in a bunch of blood inside my eye causing very blurred vision. I see the retinal specialist tomorrow and I’ll find out if he wants to wait a while longer to see if it clears up on its own or if surgery is in order. [I’m sure that would be a lot of fun – someone sticking needles and instruments directly into your eye!!]
Reading and writing are a bit challenging but once again I feel the need to vent about what is going on with this continued assault on our democracy. We were all taught in school that, in a democracy, when there is an election, the votes are counted and the person getting the most votes is declared the winner. It seems like a pretty simple concept. Of course, back in the dark ages when I went to school, it was before the time of social media and massive litigation campaigns were a factor in what is supposed to be a democratic election.
Trump has been setting the stage for this whole ‘voter fraud’ argument for months, so what is going on now should come as no surprise to anyone. In spite of the fact that there is virtually zero evidence of widespread voter fraud, Trump and his acolytes continue to insist that the election was ‘stolen’. I guess people forget that Trump flipped the ‘blue wall’ states in the last election by very thin margins. None of those states were a landslide victory for Trump. Given that, it should be no surprise that they could flip the other way. Further, people seem to have forgotten that all of the US intelligence agencies agreed that there was significant Russian interference in the 2016 election with the sole intent of getting Trump elected. It seems to me that any arguments about ‘voter fraud’ are standing on pretty thin ice.
The popular vote clearly went to Biden by over 4 million votes. If you recall, in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over 3 million votes. Trump appointed a commission to look for all of the ‘illegal votes’ that caused him to lose the popular vote and they were disbanded because they found nothing. The same is true now. The fact is, over 4 million more people in America voted for Biden rather than Trump and if it weren’t for the arcane vagaries of the electoral college, this would be over.
If you look at the remaining ‘battleground’ states and the vote counts, it is clear that Biden will win all of those states, with the possible exception of Arizona but it appears he will win that as well. And given the history of recounts, it is highly unlikely that any recount will change the results enough to affect the outcome. Trump and his team are well aware of that. So, what is their strategy?
Their strategy is two-fold. They are going to mount a media blitz to get his base all fired up claiming that, in spite of zero evidence, the election was stolen. Secondly, they will file a flurry of lawsuits in the hopes that 1) something will stick and 2) they will continue to delay the process with the hope that the election will ultimately be thrown into the House of Representatives. This is not democracy. This is, in fact, an attempt to steal an election in which the American people have spoken.
Frankly, I am quite tired of Trump supporters wrapping themselves in the American flag claiming to be patriots when what they are doing is the least patriotic thing they could be doing. The foundation of democracy is the exercise of free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power. Trump and his supporters are advocating for the exact opposite of this, which is exactly what happens in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes around the world.
If Trump and his followers have concrete evidence of voter fraud, they need to produce that evidence and let the legal process work it out. Rumors, wishful thinking and baseless conspiracy theories are not evidence. So far, every single lawsuit the Trump campaign have filed has been thrown out of court, with the exception of one, which had no significance on anything other than to let observers stand a bit closer to the vote counters. There is no doubt that Trump’s legal team understands that almost none of these lawsuits have any merit and are simply part of the process to cloud the issue and delay the process.
This situation is not even close to the Bush-Gore election that was decided by the Supreme Court. That election involved a few hundred votes in one state. Biden is leading by thousands of votes in four states. So, why is Trump fighting this so hard? In previous posts I have outlined my theory. Trump understands that he is facing a lot of legal jeopardy, particularly at the state level, once he leaves office. That is what is really at work here. He doesn’t care about ‘democracy’. He cares about protecting his own ass and he is using all of his acolytes and this false narrative of ‘voter fraud’ and ‘election stealing’ to try to cling to the protection of being president. He and his family all understand that once they are regular citizens, they will be subject to the same laws as the rest of us – and, if you believe Michael Cohen and others, they are likely facing a lot of legal and financial problems
I am hoping that our democracy is strong enough to withstand this assault over the next 72 days. Personally, I will not rest easy until the moving van is loaded up and pulls away from the White House. Hopefully I, and the rest of the world, will start seeing the future more clearly after that.
Trump is an anarchist and for four years he has wanted to destroy our democracy and put his dictatorship in its place . I saw this happening for four years and he will never give up until he accomplishes his goal.