As we read material or watch television, it is apparent that the existing president is unhappy. He is asking people to send him money. He is firing people who are not his toadies. Some of his children are telling him to stay the course because the ballots are a sham, or other children are trying to persuade him that he needs to remember his legacy (of which I know not at all. What legacy?).
(Note: The credit on this photo goes to Doug Mills / The New York Times, and the image is stunning.)
The president-elect now has won Arizona, and just as I write this: Georgia! Well. So Joe Biden has 306 electoral votes, and Donald Trump has 232 (he took North Carolina today). All elections have now been called.
Trump’s “lawyers” are miserably failing because these shoddy lawsuits are not getting any traction about problems with balloting. The stone-walling of many of his supporters in the Senate and other agencies – such as the GSA big-wig who wants to hear a “concession” so the president-elect and his team can find room in the White House and be given the money to get people to work? What a ridiculous situation. Biden wants the first thing to get done is addressing the virus. But why would the existing president give a flying you-know-what about the pandemic?
These people are just holding up the president-elect’s work, while he is trying to get things in place by the time of the Inauguration on January 20. It’s not that far away. And this run-up just feels like some sort of high school stupid prank. Like sticking out their tongues.
Yesterday, I finally finished last week’s New Yorker. There was a story about speculation of what might happen when the election was called if Biden won. It was quite interesting, and there were some really intriguing comments. The story was titled “Gaming the Endgame / If Trump loses the election, he’s facing huge debts, and possibly prison. Whatever happens, he’ll put up a fight.”
And so he has. The writer was Jane Mayer, who wrote a blockbuster book a few years ago titled Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. It was chilling and frightening. Mayer is a great reporter and makes a reader keep moving along. She opens the piece with the history of the endtimes for “despondent” President Richard Nixon, and everything just flowed from there.
At some point, this will need to be finished. But when? Soon, one will hope. This kind of non-transition is offensive, but just about everything over the past four years has been offensive.
Just a few links: The story from last week’s New Yorker, a piece in The New York Times that deals with Trump’s political future, and a cartoon today in The Colorado Sun.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/why-trump-cant-afford-to-lose
Chandler in Denver 