This blog had originally been intended to provide more (to say the least) “regular” updates than it has, but no time like the present!
The US Presidential election is three weeks from today because some hundreds of years ago, a bunch of farmers thought Tuesday was the most logical day to hold an election. As everyone well knows, Joe Biden is crushing Donald Trump in public polling by an even more sizable margin than Hillary Clinton was at this point in time. This year, however, the mechanics of voting seem to be far more consequential than persuasion or turnout operations. With truly unprecedented turnout expected in 2020, both by mail and on Election Day itself, the nuances of polls matter less than how capable (or, dare to say, ethical) county officials and secretaries of state will prove to be.
In a truly pathetic and undemocratic twist, President Donald Trump has adopted a new line of effort in his re-election campaign: campaigning against the election itself. This is a two-pronged approach, that consists of him using his platform to delegitimize the election before it even happens (which, of course, you would only do if you expect to lose big), and actively undermining the anticipated vote-by-mail surge through sudden US Postal Service “reforms”. In 2016 he was roundly chastised for not agreeing to accept the results of the election before it happened. Then, he was running as an (undeniably) outsider, charging that the election was already “rigged” against him, because he was not a traditional politician. Now, in 2020, he is reprising that same concept of a rigged election, with the odd twist that he is now the single most powerful administrator in the US government. Of course, he and his Administration have no interest in actual voter fraud, actual election interference, or actual campaign finance violations, choosing instead to chase ghosts and accuse their opponents of that of which they themselves are guilty.
Hot off his COVID-19 diagnosis, the President received a key endorsement from the Taliban and will be campaigning in the (now) battleground state of Georgia on Friday. Meanwhile, Joe Biden continues to cruise by being everything Donald Trump is not– boring, moderate, sane, and not endorsed by the Taliban, to name a few. Try as they might, the Trump campaign and all of what’s left of conservative thought leaders can’t seem to make anything stick to Biden. Remember the Tara Reade scandal? That fell apart pretty quickly upon further scrutiny, and, critically, was never echoed by another of the countless women in Biden’s life. Remember the claims of senility? They’re still tossing it out there in hopes it will stick, but a debate performance in which every poll showed Biden winning seems to have quashed that. Remember the “he won’t come out of his basement!” accusations? Well, guess who doesn’t have COVID-19 as a result?
America is clearly sick of this bizarre Donald Trump experiment. In some future (and angrier) blog post, I’ll delve into the gross, hateful nature of our country that led us to elect him in the first place. For now, and until or unless the polls change, I’m enjoying watching Trump squirm. He sees the walls closing in around him, realizes he’s incapable of doing what he needs to in order to win re-election, and is flailing, desperately. Unfortunately, that’s when any animal is most dangerous.