HELL IS EMPTY AND ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE

Donald Trump, to the surprise of no one who’s been paying attention for the past four years, has crossed yet another uncrossable line.  After spending the past couple of years trying to recruit the leaders of China and Ukraine to help him win re-election, Trump still found himself trailing badly in the polls. 

There was only one thing to do!  Ask Brazil for help!

Or maybe there were other things to do.  Like deflect attention from the worst economic quarter in history by tweeting a suggestion that we should postpone the election until Trump’s prospects improve.

Personally, I’d say if we were going to change the date of the election, we ought to move it up, not back.  Let’s vote on Labor Day and get this shit over with.  Give Trump six weeks to pack up and get out, and inaugurate Joe Biden on November 26.  That would be the greatest Thanksgiving of my life.

Meanwhile, back on Earth 1, Joe Biden speculated last April that Donald Trump would try to delegitimize a loss in the upcoming election.  He was widely mocked as paranoid, a victim of Trump Derangement Syndrome.  So where does Joe Biden go for his apology?    

So what are we to make of Trump’s proposal?  People on the Left are talking past each other as usual.  On one side, institutionalists make a few important points. 

·        Congress, not the president, sets the date of the election.  Good luck getting the House Democratic majority to agree to delay the election.

·        The elections themselves are run by the individual states.  That doesn’t make interference impossible, but it’s not subject to the whims of Donald Trump. 

·        The Constitution says that the president’s/vice president’s terms of office end on January 20, 2021.  If the Electoral College hasn’t certified a 2020 winner by then, the Speaker of the House will assume the office until such time as things get sorted out.  I could live with President Pelosi while we get all the votes counted. 

In summary, the institutionalists say, Republicans are acting like they expect to lose.  Keep calm and carry on. 

And against those perfectly reasonable points, other perfectly reasonable people say, are you fucking kidding me?  Donald Trump doesn’t give two shits about the law, and neither does the Republican Party.  They’re not acting like they expect to lose.  They’re acting like they’re planning to stage a coup d’état.  What the Constitution says is all well and good, but what are we going to do when Trump, Barr, and the rest of them ignore the Constitution?

Fair point.  Here are some thoughts.  Prayers to follow.

My main concern in this election is voter suppression.  Republicans have closed voting sites to make voting less convenient.  They are recruiting “poll watchers” to lurk at the remaining voting sites in the hopes of intimidating likely Biden voters. And this year, they’ve decided to sabotage voting by mail. 

Donald Trump seems to believe that there’s a difference between voting absentee (for example, military personnel stationed overseas) and voting by mail.  He’s too dumb to know that absentee votes are submitted by mail.  Somehow, those ballots remain pure.  But regular vote by mail ballots are all fake, submitted by members of Antifa, ISIS, and MS-13. 

If you believe that, the only way to keep America safe from democracy is to destroy the U.S. Postal Service.  Which is what Trump is doing right now.  I worry that the USPS, intentionally or simply because they’ll be critically understaffed, will slow-walk the delivery of ballots (or “loses” some of them in Democratic precincts).  States need to be willing to accept mail ballots that arrive late, and we all need to understand that this means that results in some states may take longer to tally.

I hope it won’t get this far, but if the 2020 election returns are inconclusive, Democrats also need to be ready for the next “Brooks Brothers Riot” – Republican attempts to stop counting the votes, as they did in Florida in 2000.  If needed, there will be hundreds of thousands of Democrats who’d be willing to descend on Tallahassee (or Phoenix, or Madison, or Raleigh, or Atlanta), or wherever Republicans try to interfere with the small-d democratic process.  The Biden campaign needs to be prepared to flash the bat signal.

My hope is that Biden’s win is so overwhelming – both in the popular vote and in the Electoral College – that no serious person will question the legitimacy of the election.  Then it all comes down to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts.  I don’t trust Roberts any farther than I can throw him, but he appears to be an institutionalist.  If the Electoral College certifies a Biden victory, I would expect Roberts to swear Biden in on January 20.  If that happens, it’s game over. 

Whatever paramilitary units Bill Barr may be able to muster, President Biden will be the new Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces, nuclear codes and all.  President Biden will chill long enough for the Secret Service to escort the Trump crime family out the back door.

I should note that there are those who insist that Trump was merely trolling when he tweeted about delaying the election.  He was just trying to divert attention from the terrible economic news released that day.  Maybe, but so what? 

Trump thrives on chaos, and he’s a super-spreader.  But when his opponents begin to bicker about which terrible thing is worse – “hey, stop obsessing about A when the real problem is B” – they’re missing the point.  Both A and B can be real problems at the same time.  A and B will continue to fester, and they’ll be joined by L-M-N-O-P soon enough.  Our job is to build a firewall to protect X, Y, and Z.

Three months to go. Eyes on the prize.