Category: Uncategorized

Re-Evaluation

We have re-evaluated the “story” of the American Civil War in recent years.  While Americans still recognize the “pathos” of a struggle that set brother against brother, the “new revisionist” history of the War creates a clear moral position.  One side was fighting for the “right” to enslave others: the other side was fighting against it.  

That was clear to those in the 1850’s before the War, and it was clear during the effusion of blood that was the War.  It was only in the 1890’s, after the Union Reconstruction troops were withdrawn from the South and the now older Confederate leaders began to write their stories that the first “revision” of the history began.  “It wasn’t about slavery,” they claimed, “It was about the right of states to determine their own course.”  And they added that the North benefited mightily from slavery, perhaps even more than the South, so there was no moral “high ground”.

Like all good excuses, the “Lost Cause” Confederates had just enough truth on their side to sound convincing.  The North certainly benefited from slavery.  The textile mills of Massachusetts needed the raw material of slavery, cotton, to feed into their giant looms.  Even during the War itself, Southern cotton still found it ways across the tenuous border into the North.  But if it weren’t for slavery, there would have been no war.  And if the South had won, slavery would have remained.  All the “Lost Causes” in the world couldn’t change those facts.

Lost Cause

I too have walked the line from Seminary Ridge to “the Copse of Trees” at Gettysburg, the line of Pickett’s disastrous Charge and the “High Water Mark” of the Confederacy. Southern author William Faulkner (a wonderful writer and a “Lost Causer”) described the “dream” of every fourteen year old Southern (white) boy: to stand at the ready on Seminary Ridge, the flags unfurled, before the order, and change the awful results of that charge. It’s romantic, it’s compelling, but what Faulkner never describes is that the “dream” is one of enslaving his fellow fourteen-year old boys who were black.

So when we think about Robert E. Lee, the leading Confederate General, we need to revise our “eighth grade history class” view.  We were taught that Lee, a career military officer and the rising “star” of the pre-war Army, struggled to determine whether to stand with the Nation he spent his career defending.  And we eighth graders somehow justified the fact that Lee turned on his Nation to defend “Virginia”.  Had Lee taken the commission offered as the leading Union General, perhaps the four years of Civil War and the 600,000 dead might have been only a fraction.  But he didn’t.  He stood for slavery.

Appomattox

But there still is one moment when we can look at Lee and find honor.  After four long years of struggle, when Lee saw he could find no legitimate path to continue the fight, he surrendered.  At Appomattox Courthouse, Lee chose to give up, rather than continue the slaughter.

He did have other options.  He could have led his Army of Northern Virginia to “fight to the death”.  His depleted and starving troops would have followed Lee into the rifles and the canister shot once again, until they were all just bodies lying in the April Virginia sun.  Lee had plenty of officers who wanted it to end that way.

Or Lee could have taken the advice of his younger staff.  They laid out a plan of guerilla warfare.  He could have “dissolved” his Army, sending them up into the Blue Ridge and the Appalachians to hide, regroup, and continue the war as small groups of “terrorists”.  The “cause” would have continued for years, perhaps decades or even longer.  America could have become a land of perpetual fighting, like the Middle East, or the centuries in Ireland.

Legitimacy

But Lee knew the fight for a “legal” Confederate nation was over.  The “peculiar institution”, slavery, which served as the foundation of the Confederacy, was done.  To become a “guerilla force” would not change that irrevocable result of loss on the battlefields.  So he surrendered, and ultimately ended the bloodshed.  He went to Lexington, Virginia, to Washington College, and lived the remaining five years of his life as its President.  His last act as a General was to allow for an actual peace.

Donald Trump has arrived at such a moment.  

In all the “legitimate” ways he has lost the 2020 Presidential election.  Even the states like Georgia, where the Republican Party controls all of the levers of electoral power, acknowledge that Joe Biden won the election.  And in the Courts, Trump’s attorneys are being more than laughed out of room.  Judges are disparaging their arguments, and seeing their “evidence” for what it is:  propaganda.

Trump can find a way to accept the loss, and allow the institution of the American government to continue.  Unlike Lee, Trump won’t be going to some university retirement:  perhaps he will even look to run again in 2024.  But he can maintain the legitimacy of the election, and keep it as a means for his own regaining power.

Ruin

Or he can follow the strategy the he has set upon now.  He can delegitimize the election.  Today, tens of millions of Americans really believe that the election was somehow “stolen” and the results are tainted beyond acceptability.  Those millions could be like those Confederates who would go into the hills, to fight on as guerilla forces.  But instead of acts of terror and attacks in the middle of the night, the Trump “guerillas” would simply deny the validity of anything a Biden government might do.

In the end, Democracy is a cooperative effort.  The winners govern and the losers plot to become winners once again.  But all participate in the process of governing, legitimizing the system.  But Donald Trump is flirting with a path where there is no acceptance, no moving on.  Republicans who depend on Trump’s support cannot be allowed any cooperation to govern.  That cooperation becomes “traitorous”, and to do so means political suicide.

The Choice

We see it happening today.  Even the “moderate” Republicans cannot utter the words “President-elect Biden” without risking political exile.  

Our view of Robert E. Lee is less “mythical” than it was forty years ago.  We see him more clearly as a man who stood for an unacceptable institution, a man who could have made a morally right choice, but didn’t.  But there is still the one “honorable” act of Lee:  the act of allowing the nation to move on.  We have a lot lower expectations of Donald Trump.  But Trump only exists because those in power around him allow him to continue by their silence.

Their legacy and our Democracy are at stake.  Should those Republicans standing silent remain so, the “revision” of their actions by history will be brutal.

John Mellencamp – Pink Houses (Ain’t that America)

Louisiana

So if you’ve read many of my recent essays, you know that my wife Jenn has taken in a “rehab” dog, Louisiana.  Lou was rescued from Baton Rouge with two broken legs and a dislocated hip. A team from Lost Pet Recovery, the group that Jenn and I volunteer with, went down to pick him up.  OSU veterinary care patched him up, with a plate in one leg and hip relocation surgery, and now he’s doing his second “rehab” stint here at our house.

Lou’s up early, and needs his “big” walk of the day as part of the rehab.  Then he takes a bunch of drugs to keep him quiet so he can heal. It takes a while for him to settle down again and he needs company.  We’ve turned Jenn’s office into his rehab facility, and we take turns “hangin’ with Lou on the daily shifts.  He wants us there, you can tell from the Cajun accented howls if we leave too soon.

But it’s a good time to get some writing done.  I’m sitting here in Jenn’s office at 5:30 in the morning, staring at her map of the United States on the wall.  There are pushpins in all of the places she’s gone. Most of them we’ve visited together. There are pins up the coast of California, from LA to San Francisco from when Jenn, our son Joe and I drove the Pacific Coast Highway through Big Sur.  We made it to Yosemite National Park on the trip as well.

Packed with Stars

The first night near Yosemite we stayed at a hotel just outside of the Park.  Yosemite National Park is huge; maybe thirty miles from the Park entrance to Yosemite Valley and the amazing waterfalls and cliffs.  The hotel was “rustic”; it kind of had that old summer camp look.  It was somewhere my Dad would have taken us on a road trip back in the early 1960’s with rough pine log beds and wood paneled walls.  

We arrived there with a couple of steaks we picked up in a little town called Manteca on the way over from San Francisco.  That was our stop to do some laundry and shopping. We also brought some bottles of wine from the Hearst Castle winery in San Simeon just south of Big Sur.

After grilling steaks, potatoes and green beans, and knocking back a couple of bottles of Chardonnay, Jenn, Joey and I decided to climb “the mountain” behind the hotel.  It was really a hill; we were already in the mountains.  But our adventure led us to the stars of Yosemite, far away from the city lights.  It was amazing, from the Milky Way to the constellations to the planets:  stars packed the sky from horizon to horizon.

We woke up slow the next morning, sore from the stumbling journey back down, and from the chardonnay as well. We would see Half Dome, Bridal Veil Falls, El Capitan and Glacier Peak, that next day, and they were amazing.  But nothing was quite as striking as all those stars, up on the hill above the camp just outside the Park.

Solitary Drive

There’s another pushpin in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jenn and I, and Dash and Buddy, our two dogs at the time, drove out to Telluride, Colorado, to visit my sister and brother-in-law.  We travelled out through Missouri, Kansas and Colorado, but decided to return on the “Southern Route” through New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma.  

So we drove out of Western Colorado, past ancient Mesa Verde and into the high desert Navajo Country in New Mexico.  We made the long empty drive down US 550 diagonally through the plateau country, from Farmington to Albuquerque.  It was empty land on an empty road, dry red high country.  It was remarkable for it’s quiet solitude, as if no one had walked those hills before.  

We stopped at a gas station in the middle of the journey, the only stop for a hundred miles.  The blaring heavy metal rock coming through speakers in the store contrasted with the ultimate quiet of the squared off mountains all around.  The kids working the store seemed surprised by the interruption – a customer they didn’t know.  But they were polite, and directed us to the Port-a-Potty in the back.

Twelve Hours 

And there’s a pushpin in one of our “go to” places, Pensacola, just twelve hours from gray Pataskala winter to the white beach and sun.  It’s a fun town, part beach, part Navy, part Southern charm and part New Orleans. 

There’s a park nearby, just across the state line, the Alabama Gulf State Park. The Lodge there is isolated on the beach, half a mile from the next nearest structure.  The hotel is wonderful, the Gulf of Mexico just outside the room windows.  You can sit on the balcony and watch the waves come in.  And while the restaurant is a little “too” gourmet for our taste, there are plenty of other places to eat not too far away.

That was the last trip we took, just a couple weeks before the world changed with COVID. 

Just Folks 

In all of those places, from Big Sur to Yosemite, Telluride to Albuquerque, Pensacola to Gulf Shores:  no one ever asked if we were Democrat or Republican.  We were all just “folks”, enjoying the scenery, the food, the life and the people of those very different places.  

So when I get too wrapped up in the politics of the moment, on what damage might be left to do before this President leaves office, and how my family, friends and neighbors will react to our shockingly fragile government and life, I think back on that map, and Jenn’s pushpins.  It’s still an amazing country, with lots to see.  When COVID is over, and maybe our politics get back to “normal”(whatever that might be now); there’s Boston and Seattle, back to New York, and maybe Big Bend National Park way down in Texas.  There’s a lot of America to see, and Americans to meet.  And maybe we can all be just “folks” again.  

I’m looking forward to that. 

Farm Town

When I moved here to Pataskala, Ohio in 1978, it was still considered a “farm town”.  The directions to the high school were: “Turn left off State Route 16 onto Watkins Road, go south three miles, and it’s in the west cornfield just before you reach the National Road”.   In October, soon after the fields were cleared, the high school had “Tractor Day” when the seniors drove their Green or Red (it’s a thing) tractor to school and paraded in the parking lot.  

The landscape, now covered with sub-divisions, was dotted with older farmhouses, barns, sheds and silos.  Silos were the tall circular structures where grain was stored, piped into the top and filled at the end of the harvest.  Some silos would get corn some would get soybeans.  In the spring, when the structures were empty they were fun to “play” in. 

The school “tradition” was to kidnap the senior government teacher on the last day of seniors’ regular school.  No one told me about that tradition when I took the job, but for the first three years of my career, I found myself bound (one year handcuffed) and held by the graduating class.  Silos were a great “prison”, though one year I figured out I could jump out of a window about twenty feet up.  

I managed to escape, hide from the searching (and not quite sober) seniors in a field, and walked the few miles back home.  That year they weren’t able to parade me as the trophy into the morning senior assembly.  They were eighteen, I was twenty-four.  It was a great game.

Danger

But silos could be dangerous places as well.  Every year in some small farm school in Ohio, there’s the tragic story of a kid lost to the grain in a silo.  They fall in as the grain is being loaded, the dust chokes them to unconsciousness, and the grain smothers them to death.

While there are still a few old farmers left at the local diner, Pataskala is not really a farm town anymore. Forty years have turned it into a suburb of Columbus, with housing developments and industrial parks filling the places were corn and soybeans grew. Most of the kids at school couldn’t identify what “green and red” means when it comes to farm equipment, and struggle to tell the difference between soybeans or corn growing in the few remaining spring fields. John Deere makes lawn tractors as far as they are concerned.

And the few remaining silos are now homes for rodents and bats.  The danger there isn’t the grain, it’s the structure collapsing on the few adventurous kids who put down their video controllers long enough to venture outside.

The News

But there is a different kind of silo that impacts our growing suburban community.  It’s a silo of information, a “mental” structure rather than a physical one.  But those mental silos are just as real as the old silo that still looms by the railroad tracks in “downtown” Pataskala.  And they are just as dangerous.

While forty years has changed the landscape, it’s really only been in the last ten that we’ve seen this mental containment.  Up through the first decade of the twenty-first century, we all got our information, “the news,” from similar sources.  We read the Columbus Dispatch or the Newark Advocate, and we watched Channels 4, 6, and 10.  Sure there was cable news, with Fox, CNN and MSNBC, but we still all went to the same “well” for most of our general information.

Maybe we should blame it on the IPhone.  When did “getting” the news become a matter of watching a two-inch by three-inch screen?  And when did our news sources stop being Dan Rather and Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw?  Now we have our “inside sources”, the Twitter feed that tells us exactly what’s going on.  And the only time we catch the “local” news on 4, 6, or 10 is to see the high school football highlights or catch a late weather alert.  

Facts

Our information is so “silo’ed” that what’s a “fact” is no longer a certainty.  We are in the middle of a global pandemic.  Over a quarter of a million Americans are dead just in the last nine months.  Our schools here in Pataskala just went “virtual”, because too many of the staff are getting sick.  And yet, we can’t even agree to wear masks, social distance, or stay home for Thanksgiving.  My silo of information says yes – my neighbor’s silo says it’s all a hoax.

Over the next six months, how we decide to deal with COVID will determine how many more will die.   And which information “silo” we live in will decide what we think about that.

And now there’s an even bigger question.  Another neighbor down the street flies his American Flag at half-staff today.  Below the Stars and Stripes – a Trump for President banner. He believes that Trump won the 2020 Presidential election, and that Joe Biden truly stole the Presidency from him.   There’s no discussing it.  His silo of information tells him over and over and over that the election has been rigged.

And my silo says the opposite: that Donald Trump is intentionally trying to destroy confidence in the election process, for his own personal and financial benefit.  And that the Republican Party, sold lock, stock and soul to Trump, is willing to disenfranchise as many minority voters as it takes to maintain their power.

Collapse

The old silos out in the fields are collapsing from disuse and age.  They are a hazard: old bricks falling from the top, and vermin living in the base.  But the information silos built mainly on the screens in our pockets are structurally impregnable.  We cannot peer out; we can only look up at our one source of information, pouring like grain on top of us.  And who’s to say that we are right?   If all we see is corn, how do we know what the soybeans look like?

There are two Americas right now, one looking at “corn” and saying there are no “soybeans”, and one doing the other.  And no matter whether corn or soybeans are “right”, as Lincoln said:

“…a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Holding a prior President criminally accountable after their Administration is not “the American Way”.  It is far outside the “norms” of American History.  It’s “banana republic” behavior; what the rotating dictators of some unnamed Latin American country might do.  

Watergate

Gerald Ford became President upon the resignation of Richard Nixon after two years of the Watergate scandal . The Republican leadership of the Congress, told Nixon he would be impeached and removed from office.  While removal from office isn’t a criminal offense, it would prevent Nixon from getting his much-needed Government pension.  And he still would be open to criminal prosecution. So he resigned.

 There was ample evidence that Nixon committed multiple criminal offenses as President. He was even an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a Federal criminal obstruction of justice indictment that resulted in multiple convictions.

But Ford determined that a criminal trial of Richard Nixon would drag the “Watergate Era” on for years.  His goal was to move the nation on, to end “…our long national nightmare”.  So he pardoned Nixon for any crimes he might have committed as President of the United States.  There would be no “perp-walk”, no mug shot, and no “show trial” with Richard Nixon in handcuffs.

Ford took a tremendous amount of “heat” for the pardon, even testifying at a Congressional hearing to explain his reasoning.  It was one of the major reasons he lost to Democrat Jimmy Carter two years later.  But Ford was a Republican like Nixon, and the Vice President appointed by Nixon to replace the resigned Spiro Agnew.  There couldn’t have been a friendlier “venue” for Nixon’s pardon.

Political revenge in America occurs at the polling place.  We don’t “do” vendettas, and we don’t put our former leaders on trial. We vote them out. Or at least, that’s what we’ve done in the past.

Unprecedented

The Trump Administration can be characterized by one word:  unprecedented.  From his very first day in office, as Press Secretary Sean Spicer unabashedly lied about the size of the inauguration crowd, the Trump Administration broke the “norms” of American Government.   

There is an actual list of over 20,000 lies that President Trump told in the first three and a half years in office (WAPO). But lying isn’t illegal.  And there are the hundreds of outrageous policy decisions from selling off mineral rights in National Monuments to building oil pipelines through sacred Native American lands to using Federal forces to battle protestors in the streets.  But those policy decisions, as much as they were disliked, aren’t illegal either.

The President politicized the Department of Justice, suggesting prosecutions and demanding personal loyalties from chief law enforcement officers.  These actions might have bordered on obstruction, and were distasteful and against long established norms of America. But they weren’t illegal.

So if Donald Trump, forty-fifth President of the United States committed crimes, what were they?

Already Determined

There are two areas that are “done deals”.  The first is the Russia investigation, conducted by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s team.  The exhaustive report issued by Mueller and long debated in Congress turned out to be an exercise in “fence sitting”.  Mueller refused to take a side. 

 From the start of the investigation he determined that a serving President couldn’t be charged. So he never suggested what those charges might be.  While there seems like plenty of evidence for charges, those questions are already “asked and answered” in the eyes of the American people, regardless of the unsatisfying results.

The only possible charge Trump could face from the Russia investigation now is as part of the Michael Cohen indictment, where he was the unnamed “Individual One” who orchestrated the violation of campaign finance laws.  And while that is a pre-cooked charge, ready for re-heating, it also is exactly the kind of charge that would be seen as the Biden Administration “getting vengeance”.

The second area that’s a “done deal” is the Ukraine scandal that led to Trump’s impeachment.  The evidence was actually pretty clear, and is even clearer today than it was during Trump’s impeachment trial in front of the Senate.  The President tried to use the power of the US government to leverage a foreign leader for “dirt” against a political opponent. Criminal actions, including obstruction of justice and abuse of power, clearly occurred.  

But the people of the United States feel that this is “adjudicated”.  The Impeachment Trial felt like a trial. And even though it has nothing to do with criminal law or the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment, in the public eye, the President is “not guilty”.

What’s Left?

There are two areas where the upcoming Biden Administration could look for criminal charges against the forty-fifth President.  The first area is in Trump and his family’s use of the office of the President to enrich themselves.  From getting special deals for golf courses in Scotland, to hotel fees in the Old Post Office in Washington, the Trump business has consistently “monetized” the Presidency.  Some of these may well violate the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and other actions look lie a straight “shakedown” of the American people.  

And though some of Trump’s personal and business behavior may be beyond the scope of the Department of Justice, they may be right in the ballpark of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.  That investigation is already underway, and will soon pick up the pace, unencumbered by the burden of Trump being the serving President.

And finally there is the singular outrageous act of the Trump Administration, separating children at the border from their parents.  At least 666 children cannot be returned:  the government lost contact with the parents.  This intentional and morally reprehensible act may be criminal as well, a crime against humanity.

Biden’s Choice

Joe Biden is a traditionalist.  He will almost automatically look to history, and Gerald Ford’s precedent.  I don’t expect Biden to pardon Donald Trump for anything. But I do expect that he will avoid the morass and division a Trump prosecution might cause.

However, Joe Biden is also an institutionalist.  He believes that the President should keep the Department of Justice at arms length.  So if his Attorney General, or a new US Attorney, wants to pursue charges against Donald Trump or his family, Joe Biden may feel obligated to stay away from the decision.  That would fit his and America’s norms for what the President should do.

COVID

It feels like life is starting to close down again, and it is not just Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio doing the closing.  We can read the COVID statistics.  Ohio in the past three days:  total cases increased by 14,000.  Hospitalizations are up 600.  And fifty more have died of COVID (Ohio).  Our local schools are switching to full online learning Thursday.  A statewide “mandatory unenforced” curfew goes into effect Thursday as well, from 10 pm to 5 am.  The circle of COVID is closing in.

We are lying low as well, taking care of the dogs, and staying close to home.  We seemed to have slipped into a shrunken world of our own.  So, to break things up at least a little bit last night we threw all of our rules out the window.  I went to pickup a fast-food dinner at Wendy’s!

Nullification

So I was in the Jeep, waiting in the drive-thru line when I heard the news.  There is an obscure government committee in Michigan, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers.  After an election, this four-member group has the task of “balancing the books”.  They make sure the precinct totals reported match the actual precinct counts.  After an election, they literally cross check the lists by hand. 

Like election boards all across the nation, the Wayne County Board is split between representatives of the two major political parties, Republican and Democrat.  These are “professional” board of election personnel; it’s their job.  But they are divided by Party, because here in America, that’s how we try to guarantee fairness.  There’s no pretense of some “apolitical” group of neutral workers.  We just assume both Parties have an interest, and will watch each other.  And they do.

So it was a routine meeting.  The four completed their task; the books were crosschecked and agreed to.  The vote was a formality, announcing to the world that one more step in the common election process was concluded.  They Wayne County Board of Canvassers would certify the election results to the Michigan State Canvassing Board.

But they didn’t.  The two Republican representatives voted against certification.  This was despite the books being “balanced”.  Their task was completed.  They simply refused to acknowledge it.  But by voting against “certifying” the votes, it was a two to two tie, and the certification process was stopped.

Disenfranchisement

Wayne County, by the way, contains the single biggest municipality in Michigan: Detroit.  Joe Biden won Wayne County by almost 300,000 votes.  He won Michigan by 149,000 votes, so if somehow the votes in Wayne County could be “vanished”, that would leave Donald Trump as the winner of Michigan.

The Wayne County vote is 15% of the total votes in the state of Michigan.  The thought was breathtaking.  These two folks on the Board of Canvassers, could disenfranchise over 800,000 people, and change the results of the election.  And they could do it, without legitimacy.  As the saying goes, “…they had one job to do”.  And they did it, to completion, and agreed on the results.  It was only then that they decided to vote against their own conclusions.

And that’s where I felt the rise of just a little bit of panic.  If two obscure folks in a dingy office in Detroit could change the course of the election in Michigan, couldn’t that happen in Philadelphia, and Milwaukee, and Atlanta?  Is the pressure generated by the Trump-led disinformation campaign so great, that everyday government workers will determine to ignore their own findings, and knuckle-under to illicit pressure?

For just a moment, I saw an America where the votes of millions could be completely ignored.  It already happens, legally, with the Electoral College system.  Out of the last five Presidential elections, twice the winner of the popular vote has lost the Presidency.  But this “vision” was on a whole different scale.  This wasn’t some Constitutional peculiarity; this was out and out disenfranchisement on a scale the United States hadn’t seen since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Win At All Cost

And who would be disenfranchised?  The Republican Party knows full well that people of color vote overwhelmingly for – not Republicans.  So disenfranchising them would allow Republicans to win.  The idea that an American political Party, the Party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Earl Warren, would fully embrace the concept that they cannot fully represent the nation is astounding.  That the Grand Old Party would then simply say:  “don’t count their votes” – well, that’s not my America.

 I felt my foundational “Boy Scout” belief in American values tremble.  

A couple of hours later, the two Republicans on the Wayne County Board of Canvassers changed their mind.  Whatever threats they received that made them vote against their own conclusions the first time, paled when threatened by the real possibility that a Michigan Judge might find them in contempt for ignoring their own findings.  And the Republican leaders of the Michigan legislature made it clear that “they” weren’t going to overthrow the legitimate decision of the voters of Wayne County.  

So the two Republicans on the Wayne County Board of Canvassers changed their mind again, and the vote was certified by a four to zero agreement.  Sure, they got a “sop”, an agreement that the Michigan Secretary of State (a Democrat) would conduct an “audit” of the Wayne County results.  But the process continues in Michigan.

Fail Safe

The entire event shows how close to the knife-edge our Democracy seems to be.  There’s a 1964 black and white movie about nuclear war starring Henry Fonda called “Fail Safe”.  The story goes that a computer glitch sends bombers to attack Russia, and there’s no way to call them back.  It’s a dark, depressing film, as Fonda (the President) tries to convince the Soviet leader that he should not respond by using his nuclear weapons.  The rest of humanity went on about their everyday lives, not knowing that the mushroom clouds were just minutes away.

Life is on that edge right now.  COVID is closing in.  And this little vignette in Detroit should demonstrate how fragile our Democracy really is.  There won’t be tanks in the streets, or even Proud Boys with AR-15’s to change our government.  It will be obscure officials, making fateful decisions in backrooms.  

And then it will be gone.

Light in the Tunnel

I can’t leave this essay here.  The Attorney General of Michigan stepped in within minutes to defend the voters.  The threat of contempt of court was real, so the judicial system of Michigan was on hand to defend Democracy as well.  And the leaders of the Michigan legislature refused to “back” this subversion of the vote.

There is hope.  The “process” righted itself.  There is “light at the end of the tunnel”, and it’s not the headlight from the 4:35 freight to Chicago or a nuclear blast.  But somehow it does feel we need to watch our Democracy closer than ever before.  It’s not time to panic, but it is time to keep our eyes open.  

Democracy may need our help in the next sixty days.

Math

A “Facebook” friend of mine complained of COVID restrictions last night.  She posted: “Only .0001% deaths…and we are getting ready to shut down again.  This is more than ridiculous!!!”  Here in Ohio this has been a recurring theme since last March.  We had our fair share of protestors on the State House lawn, demanding their “freedom” not to wear masks.   And small business owners, reasonably afraid of losing their livelihoods, have fought against restrictions.

So let’s start with where we are in Ohio right now. First of all, the “.0001%” number is bogus.  How do you even get there?  Take the entire population of the state, and divide it into the number of deaths.  Mathematically, by the way – that’s “.01%”.  But besides eighth grade math mistakes, what’s wrong?  As a “snapshot”, most of the population hasn’t had COVID  – yet.  So since they haven’t been infected, they certainly aren’t dying from it.  But we know that COVID infection is spreading at an alarming rate.  Eventually most of the population may be exposed, and the “.01%” fatality rate will climb.  So here is a snapshot of Ohio numbers that make more sense.

Ohio Numbers

There are 11 million people in the state.  Almost 300,000 Ohioans have been diagnosed with COVID. That’s about 3%, and it’s growing quickly.  Also there are likely many more folks that had COVID, but were asymptomatic and never diagnosed.  Here’s the critical number though:  out of those diagnosed, 22,265 had to be hospitalized.  That’s 7%.  So if you are diagnosed with COVID, right now there’s a 7% chance of ending up in a hospital for treatment here in Ohio.

There have been 5722 deaths from COVID here in Ohio.  Most of those who died were hospitalized – which means that there’s a 25% chance that if you need to be hospitalized for COVID, you might not make it.  That’s one in four.

And here’s the final, scary numbers.  There were 40,000 new cases of COVID diagnosed in Ohio – last week!  We are averaging 199 new hospitalized patients each day.  The rate of infection, how many people are diagnosed a week, is increasing quickly.  Sure, part of that number is that from testing more people – and we ought to be testing a whole lot more people so we have a “real” percentage of the infection in our population (Ohio Coronavirus.org). 

Waiting List

But the number that should worry Ohioans is the number of folks in the hospital.  We can argue about “rates” of infection and testing, but there is no denying the fact that our hospitals are being crushed by COVID.  The Cleveland Clinic postponed elective surgeries for the foreseeable future.  Emergency departments in the Columbus metro area were so slammed last Friday, that one Level I Trauma Center (Level I is the most able to handle major cases) redirected ambulances away from their unit, and another Level II Center was unable to accept any new patients at all.  Think of that for a moment – ambulances are redirected to Emergency Departments farther away – and if you drive yourself to the hospital – they don’t let you in.

So let’s not fool ourselves with “bad” math.  We were warned back in March:  if we don’t control the rate of infection, we will lose control of our hospitals.  We will not be able to treat both COVID patients, and the folks with all of the other problems that put them in the hospital in the first place.  People will die, who didn’t have to die.

Who Lives

We dodged that bullet in March by shutting down, wearing masks, and social distancing.  But that was a long, long time ago.  Now shutting down, masks, and social distancing are “political” issues rather than medical ones.  We even had a Supreme Court Justice make “ex parte” statements  (outside of a court case) about the Constitutionality of restrictions.  He’s worried that folks can’t practice their religion by going to church.  

We should be worried about everyone in church getting COVID.  We should be worried about the elderly, often regular churchgoers, getting COVID and dying. Not because they “had” to die, and not because it was “their time”.  Dying because some church leaders willfully ignored science and brought them together.  Benjamin Franklin famously quoted, “God helps those who help themselves”.   Justice Alito and Ohioans need to help themselves and protect folks.

There is “light at the end of the tunnel”.  Vaccines are literally around the corner.  Sometime between now and June, it’s likely that most of the population could be vaccinated, and the COVID pandemic controlled (not over).  We can then return to many of the things that we call “regular life”.  

But in the meantime – we decide how many will die.  If we control the disease:  wearing masks, social distance, and, if necessary, shutdown for a few weeks to regain control, we can save many lives.  If we don’t, then we betray those who are vulnerable and kill them.  It’s not political – it’s simple math and science.

Teddy

The “gold standard” in modern United States election turnout was the election of 1908.  Teddy Roosevelt, the incumbent, chose not to run for a third term, citing Washington’s two-term precedent.  This was in spite of the fact that Roosevelt, still young at forty-eight, became President as a result of the assassination of William McKinley and only served three years of his first term in office.

But after seven years Roosevelt had enough of being President.  A yearlong world tour awaited, including a massive safari in Africa.  So his “chosen” replacement was Cincinnati’s own William Howard Taft, the serving Secretary of War.  And while Taft didn’t have the personable energy that the dynamic Roosevelt brought to the White House, he was the technocrat who could implement Roosevelt’s Progressive goals.

Progressive v Populist

Running against Republican Taft was the populist Democrat from Nebraska, Williams Jennings Bryan.  His soaring oratory in the name of the “people” galvanized the small farmers of Nebraska, and the coal miners from Pennsylvania.  It was his third (and last) run for the Presidency.

America was still a segregated nation, and women did not have the right to vote in many states.  But of those eligible to vote, almost 66% came out to help choose the President: 14,087,379.  That’s out of a total population of just less than 89 million Americans.

It wasn’t just the voting that was segregated.  The nation was only thirty-two years beyond the end of the Reconstruction Era.  While the issue of slavery was resolved, the former slaves states still voted as a solid Democratic block.  The “Union” states tended to still vote Republican, and though Bryan earned a few inroads in Colorado, Nevada and his home Nebraska; Taft swept the northern tier and won with 51.6% of the vote. Bryan earned 43%, with candidates from the Socialist Party and a smattering of other causes taking the remaining percentages.

Showing Up

It is projected that a modern record 67% of eligible Americans voted in this month’s election.  The current count is just under 152 million – but there are a few more million votes still to be counted, particularly in California. (No, the state of California isn’t “creating” votes, no matter what the Republican Party would like you to think.  Their “vote anyway you can” system just takes a lot longer to tally.  And besides, it’s almost 17 million votes – more than the entire national vote a century ago). The US population today is 331 million people.

So for those “glass half full” kind of folks – more people voted in 2020 than ever before.  For those “half emptiers”:  almost 100 million eligible to vote chose not to.  For many it was a conscious choice. Some military officers and other officials follow the “George Marshall” precedent and don’t vote at all.  And of course, there are different groups with religious reasons for not participating.  And there are those people who just don’t think it matters, or that their voice makes a difference. 

But as far as trends are concerned more Americans voted and at a higher rate in 2020 than ever before.  America “SHOWED UP”.

And here’s another notable fact from the 2020 election.  Donald John Trump, Republican candidate for President in 2020, received the second most votes of ANY candidate for President in American history.  More than 73 million Americans voted for him.  More than ever voted for Barack Obama.  So while Joe Biden may claim a “mandate” with over 78 million, the nation is still starkly divided into two visions of America.

Uniting

Biden sees himself as a “uniter” not a “divider”.  And that’s been the overall take on his forty-seven year history in government.  Biden is the one who reached “across the aisle”.  Not only did he deal with the opposition party, but some, like John McCain, were also his closest friends.  And in his earlier days in the Senate, Biden would work across the divides within the Democratic Party.  He could reach out to the old remaining Southern Democrats, the descendants of those post-Reconstruction era segregationists.  Biden could span a party that included John Stennis and James Eastland of Mississippi, as well as Ted Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts.

The challenge of the 21^st Century for President-Elect Biden will be finding common purpose with his opposition.  The Republican Party of the past, with defined goals of personal freedom, unfettered capitalism and a strong world presence, is no longer.  Instead, the “Trumpian” Republican Party has drifted towards a more isolationist, more reactionary and racist view.  Where Biden and McCain could often find agreements, it’s hard to see the same possibilities anymore with McConnell or Graham.

It’s not because those particular Republicans don’t “think” the same way they used to.  But the Republican politics of today don’t allow them to act on those thoughts.  A “tweet” might destroy their political base.  They are “required” to fall in line with Trump’s brand of “white victimization” or lose office.  That won’t change with the 2020 results and Trump out of the White House.  It’s how the former President will stay relevant, and more importantly, pay his enormous bills.  And the battle for his “hardcore 40%” support base is only just beginning.

Division

Meanwhile the “Progressive” side of Biden’s own party will demand their agenda, the one that Biden already agreed to, at least in part.  So how does President Biden take a nation so radically divided and apply an increased national health care plan, or improved environment standards, or comprehensive immigration reform?  Who on the Republican side can he find with common purpose?  Frankly, in a Senate so evenly split, regardless of the outcomes in Georgia, can President Biden even find commonality with fellow Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia?

Abraham Lincoln prophesized that, “…a house divided against itself cannot stand”.  That was over the fundamental contradiction of the American experiment:  how a nation founded on the principle of  “…all men are created equal” could allow slavery.  Biden faces a similar racial crisis.  Within twenty-five years, white people in the United States will be the minority.  It’s the growing fear of that unavoidable truth that creates the strength of Donald Trump’s “populism”.  It’s the new incarnation of the “snake underneath the table” of American politics, the same “snake” that was there at the writing of the Declaration and the Constitution – racism.

So just over half of America has turned to a white man from the 20^th Century to deal with this “not so modern” problem.  He truly believes that we can be “E Pluribus Unum”, out of many, one.  It’s hard to see the way forward – but I hope Joe Biden does.

It’s Friday the Thirteenth in the remarkable year of 2020.  What could possibly go wrong?  

Louisiana

So for me, Friday the Thirteenth started at three in the morning.  We are rehabilitating a dog named Lou (…me and you and a dog named Lou – not quite right).  Lou is short for Louisiana, where Lou came from.  My wife Jenn was part of a Lost Pet Recovery (LPR) rescue mission to save Lou, who was found in a parking lot at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.  Lou had two broken legs, and a broken hip as well.  The LPR team brought him back to Columbus, where the folks at OSU repaired one leg and the hip.  The other leg is healing, but we’ll have to see whether it will ultimately require surgical repair.

Lou needs a lot of rehabilitation: time to recover from the surgeries, regain strength, get over heartworms, and learn how to be a “good dog”.  The hard part is that Lou is only a year and a half old, still a puppy.  But he can’t run and play.  There’s too much healing to go.  So Lou has to spend a lot of “quiet” time, not a puppy kind of thing.  The drugs he takes help, but it still is hard on him.  He sees our other dogs, who come to the door.  Our Lab Atticus will even bring toys.  But Lou can’t play yet, and he gets frustrated.  Can’t blame him.

The meds work for a while, but ultimately wear off.  And if that’s at three in the morning, then Lou’s rolling.  It’s time for a “rehab” walk (getting longer all the time), some food, and some hard persuasion to try to get Lou back into Jenn’s office, now Lou’s rehab facility.  Jenn has done most of the  “night duty”; but from time to time I’ll take that “way too early” shift.  

Dog Rules

We’ve had Lou for about a month.  He’s not a permanent addition – we are a three-dog family already.  Four would require too much space, inside and out; more then we’ve got.  But we can get Lou ready for his “final family”.  And we’ve probably got another month or so to go before Lou’s ready for adoption.  He will be around for the rest of the Trump Administration.

You knew there had to be a political “hook” to this story. Here on Friday the Thirteenth, we are teaching Lou to be a good dog.  He’s learning to behave, to play, and what’s allowed and not.  He can chew up his “rope”, and he can tear into his chew toys.  But he got in trouble for eating the rug, and the floor molding, and the orthopedic bed we picked up for him.  He’s learning – and now he can even hang out in his crate in the family room with the rest of us from time to time.  But all “good” dogs have to learn the norms, the rules.  It’s what we do with puppies, and with the kids we teach in school.

Life Rules

But I guess someone failed to teach the President of the United States how to be a “good” person.  The hardest part of running for office is losing.  It tests character.  As a high school coach for forty years, I knew it was part of my job to teach kids how to lose as well as how to win.  We put our best efforts, our hearts, and years of hard work into trying to achieve our goals.  And there were times when we did it all, and achieved what we set out to do.  But there were also times, probably more of them, that we fell short.  And as the coach, the role model, it was my job to demonstrate what the “norm” was for dealing with loss.

There is a time for deep disappointment, for frustration, and for emotion.  But that time is not in public, and it’s not towards your opponent.  After a loss, it’s time to congratulate the winner, and take responsibility for your own actions. Blaming others, opponents, officials, or other factors out of your control, doesn’t change the result.  So, as I told my teams every time it happened:  show class.  Demonstrate how to lose with grace.  Congratulate the winners; walk over and shake their hands.  Compliment them for a hard fought win.  My coaches and I did the same.  

I knew what my job was, win or lose:  to act with class, as a representative of the school, and as a role model for the athletes on my team.  The greatest lesson wasn’t in achieving the goal.  It was in learning how to live with failure or victory in life.

Missing Lesson

I listened to a reporter yesterday going to great lengths.  She was trying to explain how the “President’s men” were trying to convince the President that he had to leave office, but didn’t have to accept defeat in the polls. Donald Trump acts as if he “owns” the Presidency and the White House.  He doesn’t.  He serves at the pleasure of “We the People of the United States”.  But it seems that Donald Trump has decided his role as the “aggrieved victim” of the 2020 election will support his “post Presidency”:  politically and more important, financially.

Lou is learning what’s expected of a “good dog”.  Someday he’s going to be a great, lovable, energetic friend for some family.  He’ll always bear the scars of Baton Rouge, but he’ll be an even better dog for it.

The President could learn from Lou, or from our high school teams.  His greatest goal should be the “good” of the United States.  He can fight in court for votes if he wants, but denying Biden the information and resources to prepare for his Presidency is just selfish.  

Former President Obama described the situation yesterday. He said that Trump’s selfishness would ultimately not just hurt Joe Biden. 

It will hurt American Democracy.

Fake News

Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46^th President of the United States on January 20^th, 2021.  To paraphrase Gerald Ford, “…our long national nightmare will be over”. 

But of course – it won’t be.  Donald Trump once told CBS reporter Lesley Stahl that he called the media “fake news” all the time, so that folks would stop believing them.  And now the media and the chief election official of every state in the nation declare the veracity of 2020 election results. But they are ignored. 

It’s just fake news.

A recent survey shows that only 3% of the nation really believes that Donald Trump won the election.  But somehow it doesn’t even matter that folks know Biden’s victory is true.  Many continue to “spout” the Trump line:  the election rigged, the mail-in vote fraudulent.  That moment on Tuesday night when Trump led in Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania is a reality frozen in time that all must accept.

It’s Kelly Ann’s “alternative facts”.  The truth must be  “fake truth”.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo further added to the false confirmation. He discussed a “transition” to the “second Trump administration”.  He’s a West Point graduate.  At eighteen years old he solemnly swore to, “…protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and bear true faith and allegiance to the same”.  He graduated from Harvard Law School.   He was a Congressman from Kansas and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.  And he knowingly and willfully participates in this disinformation, “fake truth” operation.

Disinformation

Vladimir Putin couldn’t have asked for anything more.  The President, the Senate, the Cabinet; all deny the Constitutional transition of power – the lynchpin of our Republic symbolized by the Election of 1800.  

In eighth grade American History class, we learned about the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. They were the fiercest of rivals.  In my era, we taught that Adams had a troubled Presidency with the “Alien and Sedition Act” that curtailed freedom of speech and the press. But he begrudgingly accepted the results of the election.   And Adams left before Jefferson’s inaugural and went back to Boston.  But without force of arms, the government transited from Federalist control to Jeffersonian power.  It was a first in world history.

But Donald Trump is signaling the exact opposite.  He fired the Defense Secretary who dared to question the use of active military troops against protestors, and replaced the entire top echelon of civilian leadership with those absolutely loyal – to him.  He ordered his administration not to cooperate with the Biden team, not even to share information or allow office space.

His White House even declares that any Trump political appointee who dares to look for future employment (after January) will be summarily dismissed for disloyalty.  

Biden’s Response

What will he do if Trump refuses to acknowledge the election?  Biden smiles, “…he will”.  Isn’t he stymied by not having access to the intelligence, the Presidential Daily Brief?  “Well, there’s only one President, and I won’t be until January.  I don’t need that intelligence yet”.  

He’s gathers the knowledgeable.  Not only does he have access to the eight years of Obama government officials, but he’s also tapped into those career civil servants who left or were fired in the Trump years.  On his COVID task force: Dr. Rick Bright, the Health and Human Services “whistleblower” who was leading the vaccine fight and forced out for questioning the quality of testing.  

Biden’s tapped career diplomats who are orchestrating his conversations with world leaders.  There are “Biden” translators, “Biden” secured communications, and “Biden” calls scheduled.  Is it a hassle, an inconvenience, a violation of the spirit and letter of the law, the Transition Act of 1963 that was modified after 9-11?  Of course it is.

But Joe Biden does exactly what we elected him to do.  Without drama, or tweets, or declaring victimhood:  Joe Biden prepares to lead.  And, unlike what the nation witnessed for the past four years, that’s not “fake news” or “fake truth”.  

It’s the real deal. 

Here’s the theme song from the show – It’s still available on MeTV – 4 times a day, 6 days a week.

NOTE

This is my own little vignette.  You can’t fact check this, even on quasi-factual Wikipedia.  I am making this entire conversation up.  Before anyone complains I say again:  this is a fictional tale.  I have no inside knowledge, no “bugs” in the Georgia Republican Party Headquarters or Doug “I Lost to a Woman” Collins’ home.  But here’s how the conversation might have gone – from the outside looking in.

The Scene

A high level Political meeting last weekend at the Republican Party Headquarters off Peachtree in Atlanta.  The Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, Congressman Doug Collins, and Senator’s Kelli Loeffler and David Perdue are around a conference table.  They are not socially distanced, and there are no masks.  And they’re sharing boiled Georgia peanuts — all from the same bowl.

Act I

“What the Hell happened on Election Day?” cried out the Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party.  “Where were all the lines in Atlanta?  Who let all ‘those people’ vote so easily? We’ve spent generations stopping ‘them,’ who dropped the ball this time?”

Congressman Doug Collins responded:  “Yep, we let ‘them’ all vote, and we lost.  Who is going to tell the President — Georgia’s going Blue!!!!”

Appointed Senator Kelli Loeffler chimed in – “Well we can’t say the election was rigged.  We’ve got a Republican Governor, a Republican Legislature, even a Republican Secretary of State.   And besides, the rest of us Republicans did OK.  It was just the President who got beat.”

Senator David Perdue jumped in. “We sure can’t tell the President that.  We need him to get his ‘Trumpers’ back out to vote for us in January.  If we don’t back his claims of voting fraud then he’ll ‘Tweet’ all over us like Russian hookers in a fancy hotel – and we’ll lose to the Jewish guy and that Black fella.” 

Doug Collins continued:  “Well where the ‘heck’ (he’s a preacher, you know) is Governor Kemp?  He rigged the whole system for us two years ago – no one’s seen him since before election week.” 

 The Chairman replied, “Oh, Doug boy’s gone down to St. Simon’s Island, and seems to have lost his cell phone.  He doesn’t want to have anything to do with this cluster. He’s got enough worries about tangling with Stacy Abrams in two years.  If the Black vote turned out for Biden, what do you think they’ll do for Stacy? He doesn’t want to say anything that will make him a even bigger target than he already is.”

Act II

Perdue replied: “Well if we can’t blame Kemp, then somebody’s got to take the fall for this.  Someone screwed up and let the election be fair.  God (glancing at Collins) Darn-it, we’ve got to blame somebody.  What’s the Secretary of State’s name? Brad Hamburger Raffle?”

Collins responded, “His name’s Brad Raffensberger. He was a councilman from John’s Creek, up northeast of Atlanta.  And he went to school in Canada for Heaven’s sake – got an engineering degree up there.”

“NOT GEORGIA TECH?” boomed the Chairman.  “Well we can’t blame Kemp, he’ll rat us out for 2018. And we can’t admit the election was fair.  So lets demand that Raffle-ticket resign for screwing everything up!”

Loeffler and Perdue chimed in together, “We’ll tell Trump Raffle-Ticket did it!   Then he’ll blame him – not us – and get the Trumpers out for the January election!!”

Act III

Collins looked grim – he was still a loser.  But he knew that there was a way he could make Trump a winner – even though he lost.  “Here’s my idea.  We claim Raffensberger screwed up – by – maybe – Yes – the mail-in votes getting counted wrong.  So we demand that there be a recount.  Even better yet make it a HAND recount!!”

The Chairman smiled. “Why, that’ll take weeks.  So many weeks, that there won’t be a result when it comes time for the Electors be certified by the Governor to the Electoral College.”  

“Yep,” Collins replied.  “It fits right in with my favorite saying; ‘it takes a clock and a calendar’.  Time will run out, and the Georgia State Legislature will have to ‘pick’ the Electors.  And since we control the Legislature, and the Governor to sign off, we can ignore the actual popular vote, screw the Democrats and send the Electoral votes from Georgia to Congress in favor of Trump!!!”

Loeffler was a little slow on the uptake.  “But it won’t matter, Biden will still have enough votes to win the Presidency.”

But Perdue got it.  “Yep, but Trump will know we took care of him – and he’ll be down here in Georgia having rallies, spreading COVID and convincing all his folks to come on out and vote for you and me on January 5^th.  Will be Republican HEROS!!!!!”

Post Script

I’d like to say that the Democrats took the hand re-count to court, and won.  But it’s Georgia, and not every Georgia tale has a happy ending.  The story will continue…

Our Future

What am I looking forward to in the Biden Administration?  Well – big “corrections” of some of the past practices of the Trump Administration.  And Joe Biden is “on it”.  The first days promise a taskforce for COVID, a taskforce to reunite the 666 kids separated from their parents, and America’s return to both the Paris Accord and the World Health Organization.  

And regardless of who controls the Senate, we know that President Biden will go to work on healthcare.  Whether it’s improving the Affordable Care Act, or a Supreme Court decision forced redo of the whole process – Americans will find a way to have broad healthcare coverage for as many as possible.

Senate Elections

And there’s a long list of other issues, many hinging on the results of the Alaska and Georgia Senate elections.  Currently there are forty-eight Democratic Senators and forty-nine Republican seats.   Two seats are up in the Georgia runoff, and one still remains to be decided in Alaska. If Republicans win two of the three, then they have control of the Senate by one.  If the Senate is tied 50-50, the new Vice President, Kamala Harris, will break the tie for the Democrats.  

Alaska you ask?  Currently Alaska has only counted 61% of their votes.  It’s a big state with a small and far-flung population, voting by mail, airplane, and even dog sled.  The current Republican Senator, Dan Sullivan, is in the lead with 62% of the vote at the moment.  But his opponent, Independent Al Gross, who would align with the Democrats in the Senate, is less than 60,000 votes behind.  There are almost 176,000 votes left to count – so there is still a chance.

Georgia On My Mind

(Ray Charles – of course)

But the Georgia dual runoff will probably decide Senate control.  And it seems like a long shot for the two Democratic challengers, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.  They face two incumbents, David Perdue and appointee Kelly Loeffler.  On January 5^th (there goes Christmas) there will be the “final stand” of the 2020 election, the season, and the year, that doesn’t want to die.  

The first Senate meeting of the 2021 session is January 3^rd.  On that day, (assuming Sullivan wins in Alaska) there will be fifty Republicans and forty-eight Democrats, and Mitch McConnell will organize the Senate.  But he shouldn’t get too comfortable.  Who knows who might show up two weeks later (there’s another count) from the state of Georgia?

And we thought the $200 million plus campaign in South Carolina was expensive.  With two years of Senate control on the line, there will be fire hoses worth of money pouring into Georgia from all sides.  The newly empowered Democratic Party in the state is anxious to flex muscle at the polls.  And the winner will be – the local media markets that won’t be able to create enough television advertising time.  Sorry Santa, the Senators have bought it all up.

Back to Life

The other thing I’m looking forward to is “the obsession” to end.  Over the past four years, “mainlining” the “news” has become a habit.  It’s on every TV in every room of the house.  Even Lou, the broken dog we’re rehabbing back to health, gets MSNBC almost 24/7.  It’s on the radio in the cars, in headphones as I cut the grass, and the background “music” to our dinners and breakfasts.

Sunday, I put on real music as we worked around the house: music – (Aaron Burdett – Pennies on the Track).  Tomorrow night we may actually watch TV – like drama on TV besides the ongoing drama in Washington, Wilmington, and Mara Lago.  (Sure, we’ll record Rachel for later).

The intensity of the past months struck home yesterday afternoon – we got an anniversary card.  Jenn looked at me, and we both realized – it’s our eighth wedding anniversary today (November 10^th).  Eight years ago we gathered with our family and best friends at Salt Fork Lake to have a party that included a wedding.  It seems so long ago.  And the date was going right on by – neither of us remembered:  too much craziness going down.

So what do I look forward to most from President Joe Biden?  You do your job, I’ll do mine.  When it’s important, let me know.  Otherwise, just get things done.  No, I’m not giving up a lifelong involvement in politics and history.  But with the Biden inauguration, it will be nice to re-balance life.  

Resistance

I received a message from a former student yesterday.  He is on the opposite side of the political spectrum from me: a Trump supporter and a pro-life advocate. He’s a man who sees protestors as property destroyers.  He believes that folks like me never gave Donald Trump a “chance”.  We were the “Resistance” from the beginning, from Muslims bans to Russia, Charlottesville to Ukraine, and finally to COVID.  

My student carefully (and respectfully, I think) pointed out the hypocrisy he sees in Joe Biden asking for unity.  And he quietly mocked Sunday’s essay about “taking back” the flag,  Our Flag. We don’t agree, but I’m glad that after four years he’s still reading some of my essays.  I hope he reads this one.  And, he’s not wrong.

We did “Resist” from the beginning.  My first essay on “Trump World” was published on February 10^th, 2017, less than a month after the inauguration. We questioned the legitimacy of the 2016 election.  And we rejected the actions of the President from the very, very beginning.  I’ve got over nine hundred essays to prove it.

Legitimacy

This wasn’t the first time I saw a Presidency as illegitimate.  In the last couple of weeks there’s been a lot of talk about the election of 2000.  It was between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore (with just enough of a smattering of the Green Party’s Ralph Nader to alter the outcome).  The results were so close, that it came down to an incredibly thin slice of voters in Florida.

In any mass of numbers, there is always some statistical “margin of error”. The Electoral College vote came down to Florida’s twenty-five.  Out of almost six million votes cast there, the difference between Bush and Gore was less than six hundred.  It was such a small margin, that it almost fell in that “margin of error”.  If you re-counted the votes, over and over again, you might get a different outcome each time:  a flip of a coin.

A Republican “riot” stopped the re-count in heavily Democratic Miami-Dade County.  The Governor of Florida, George Bush’s brother Jeb, refused to recuse himself from the process.  The entire Florida system seemed rigged for the Republicans, and when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of stopping the count at the moment when it was in Bush’s favor, that sealed the feeling. The Court voted five to four, the five Republican appointees against the four Democratic appointees.

Earning the Presidency

So many didn’t see George Bush’s Presidency as legitimate.  Folks have “spotty” memories:  few remember the “resistance” to Bush that lasted from January 20^th 2001, until September 11^th.   But we all remember what happened then.

George Bush earned his legitimacy as President in the days and weeks after 9-11.  He rose to the challenge from his first speech from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. In those first dark hours after the attack Bush made it clear:

“Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward, and freedom will be defended.  The full resources of the federal government are working to assist local authorities, to save lives, and to help the victims of these attacks. Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.”

  He went on to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command where he met with the National Security Council and then determined to return to the White House against their advice.  We literally watched as Air Force One and the fighter escorts flew home.  They were the only planes in the sky.

In the next weeks he spoke at Ground Zero:  “I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”  But he also spoke at a mosque, making it clear that the United States was waging war against Al Qaeda, not all Muslims.

Legitimacy

After 9-11, America accepted George W. Bush as the legitimate President.  And while many continued to oppose his policies, particularly the CIA’s secret torture campaign and the war in Iraq, Bush won a second term in office.  He earned his Presidency.

Trump never won the opposition over, not even to the point of being a “loyal opposition”.  Even in a crisis more extreme than 9-11, the COVID crisis, the President never “rose to the moment” as George Bush did.  Instead, we now know, he whispered to a reporter that he knew “how bad” COVID was, but wouldn’t tell the American people.

So my old student is right.  Donald Trump was resisted from the very beginning, and until the “bitter” end.  But Donald Trump also never “rose to the moment” when he could win over the resistance, and bring the American people together.  

It’s up to Joe Biden now.  It’s clear he’s made it his priority to “reunite” America.  That’s a daunting task:  there’s pressure from the left to move their agenda.  They claim credit for winning Georgia and the “Blue Wall” states.  There’s pressure from the “right”, the Never-Trump Lincoln Republicans, who claim the same credit, seeing the Biden suburban support in part as their contribution.  And there’s pressure from the “Resistance”, who want nothing more than to see the Trump family in prison.

I don’t expect my friend to “fall in line” beneath the flag. And I certainly don’t expect all Americans to support all of Biden’s agenda.  But it’s not about giving Biden “a chance”.    It’s up to Biden to prove his legitimacy and win a “loyal opposition”.  

Biden must earn his place.

“The Star Spangled Banner, Oh long may it wave, o’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave”  – The US National Anthem

Battles

Sometimes it seems like a battle.  Not the battle for Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor, but a battle for the symbology of America.  The flag of the United States, the “Star Spangled Banner”, was “claimed” by one side of the partisan debates for the past four years.  If you supported President Trump, you got the flag.  You put it in front of your house, or on the back of your truck.  If you didn’t, well, it wasn’t yours.

It was a way to make “Resistance” feel somehow “un-American”.  

I resisted that trend from the very beginning.  There’s been a flag, the Star Spangled Banner, waving at the front of my house for decades.  With the election of Donald Trump, I was even more determined to keep it there.  American patriotism is not defined by partisan loyalty, and I was not going to allow one side of the debate to claim it.

But it’s been tough sometimes.  There are things that “we’ve” done in the past four years that I’m not proud of.  The same flag waving over my front door also waved over the border post in McAllen, Texas as children were taken from their parents.  It was on the uniforms of soldiers sent to clear peaceful protestors from Lafayette Park.  And Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville “proudly” carried it as they chanted, “Jews will not replace us”.  

The President that I worked to remove, by election, indictment and impeachment, literally wrapped himself in the flag.  It was “his”: to love America you must love Trump.  Towards the end it almost became a joke.   How many American flags were there on stage as Donald Trump falsely claimed election victory election on Friday?

Our Flag

So it was with a full heart that I watched Joe Biden and Kamala Harris claim the real victory last night in Wilmington, Delaware.  Sure there were Biden/Harris posters, handmade signs and a sweet fireworks display with drones.  And of course there were flags on the stage.  But what struck me was the number of people in the crowd carrying the Star Spangled Banner.  From little kids waving little flags, to full-sized parade flags carried by adults, to even flags thrust through the sunroofs of the assembled “drive-in”, socially distanced crowd.  

They were reclaiming our flag for Joe Biden, and for themselves. They were saying:  we represent America too.  And our America can be one of change, of hope, and of diversity.  President-Elect Biden (there – I finally typed it, I feel better already) offered a message of hope and dignity last night.  He repeated his mantra of the last two years:  though he was elected as a Democrat, he will be a President for all Americans. 

Legitimacy

There will be a battle on social media for the next few weeks.  “The Demon-crats cheat” has been the cry since before the first vote was mailed in.  Recognizing that he might well lose, Donald Trump tried to rig this election, to make it about letting “his” voters choose, and disenfranchising the rest.  The strategy couldn’t have been clearer than in the vote counts.  Mail-in voting was dominated by Biden, Election Day turnout by Trump.  It fit so perfectly into the “cheating” narrative Trump was pushing.  Where did those “mysterious” Biden votes come from in Philadelphia? Why weren’t they counted from the “start”?  It’s Philly; the Democrats always cheat in Philly.

Dude – they were in the mail, the mail Trump intentionally slowed.  And they “appeared” later, because the Republican Pennsylvania legislature wouldn’t let them be processed or counted until Election Day.  This wasn’t an accident:  it was a “grand design” of the Trump campaign to back their narrative.  The problem for them is – most people know it’s not true.

One Nation

The shock of the election for me was how many millions of people still supported Donald Trump.  But imagine the shock for them, those folks who claimed the flag, to find that even more Americans wanted Joe Biden?  No wonder the “rigged” election myth found fertile ground.  We live in our “bubbles”.  How could there possibly be so many Biden (or Trump) supporters?

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris earned 74 million votes, and still counting; the most votes ever for a Presidential ticket.  And they have an Electoral College victory, one that ultimately will be larger than Trump’s in 2016.  While it may take a week or two for that to “sink in” with the American people, I believe that most Trump supporters will come to see it as legitimate.  

And then, for a little while at least, we can all stand under the same flag: E Pluribus Unum.  Out of many one.  

Note: So I try to write essays in advance – and I had a long one on the election process all ready for today. But last night’s Biden victory speech was too important ignore – and so I wrote “Our Flag”. If you have more time on your hands than you should – here’s the “process” essay – Sunday-Sunday-Sunday.

Old School

Elections have changed in the COVID era.  The “old-school” election took place on Tuesday.  The vast number of voters went to the polls, where they were “processed” by poll workers.  They got a ballot, made their selections, and their ballot was checked and tabulated.  The precinct tabulations were added together, and the election results reported out in a few hours.  We knew “who won” by late Tuesday evening.

Process

Early voters today go to a central polling place, where the same processing occurs.  “Processing” is about three things.  First, it’s about identity, are you who you say you are.  In the “Red Map” era, that’s become much more involved, as many states demand a State Identification document for “proof”.  For most suburban voters, a Driver’s License solves the problem and it’s not a big deal.  For urban voters, and particularly for lower income voters, obtaining a state ID is a more difficult issue.  And that’s intentional, the ID laws are written to keep them from voting.

Second it’s about voting only once.  There are many opportunities to vote:  early in-person voting, absentee or “mail-in” voting, and regular in-person Election Day voting.  While the Democratic Party joke is to “Vote early and Vote often”, in reality the system is designed to prevent exactly that.  Not only do the ballots need to be counted and protected; but a record needs to be kept of all voters and when they vote (not who they vote for).  So when you get a “mail-in” ballot, but still choose to go to the polls on Election Day, the “system” has to “know” that you had both.  Only one can count, so either you “spoil” the “mail-in” when you vote at the polls,  or you commit voter fraud, and are subject to criminal sanctions.

Third it’s about getting the “right” ballot.  Different jurisdictions have different issues up for vote.  Here locally in Pataskala there are two possible school districts, several different local governmental jurisdictions, and a variety of precinct level issues.  So when you vote, they need to make sure you are voting on the correct issues for your residence.

COVID World

When a voter chooses to vote by mail, the first two parts of the “process” don’t take place until the Board of Elections receives your ballot.  And in COVID world, millions of Americans decided that it was safer to vote by mail.  Who can blame them, COVID infection rates are higher than ever.  Over 100,000 Americans are getting infected a day, and over a thousand are dying from the disease daily.

When that mail-in ballot arrives at the Board of Elections, the small number of central workers goes through the processes for each one.  And, since many state legislatures restrict when the processing can begin and don’t allow the ballots to be touched until Election Day –it takes a while.

So in the “good old days” we all did our “Norman Rockwell” and lined up at the polls to vote on Election Day.  Only the really sick, aged, or those out of town were allowed to vote absentee.  It was Election Day, and the results were out on Election night.

But now we can vote for almost a month before the technical Election Day.  And many millions of Americans vote by mail.  We don’t pay Boards of Elections to have the numbers of personnel to process all of those mail ballots in an evening, so it takes more time to count them.  Just as we now have a voting season, we also have a counting season (A time to vote, a time to count – Turn-Turn-Turn*).  

Partiality

Boards of Election recognize that their work is fraught with danger.  Everyone is worried about someone cheating, adding or subtracting votes to control who gets elected.   One way to deal with that would be to have a “neutral” counting system, kind of a “monastery” of vote counters who don’t have a “dog in the fight”.  But no one really trusts that impartiality,  and so we have the opposite.

In each Board of Election in each county or parish or district, there are parallel jobs.  If the Director is a Republican, the Deputy is a Democrat.  If the head clerk is a Democrat, the Assistant Clerk is a Republican.  When votes are counted, at least two do the counting – you guessed it, one Democrat, one Republican.  We keep our election system honest by making everything transparent, and then putting both political parties in as part of the process.

We also allow observers into the process to watch.  They are only observers (JAFO) and have no part in the process.  They can’t talk, they can’t touch, and if they see something, they have a separate procedure to report it.  But that has led to a problem in our recent elections.

In 2000, a group of Republican staffers determined that the vote re-count was going against their candidate.  They disrupted the process.  Inside as observers, they began to chant, yell, and pound on the walls.  It got so bad, that the re-count was halted, giving the staffers exactly what they wanted.  And that tactic is now part of partisan “lore”:  everyone is willing to try to gain that advantage.  So the “observers” are now trying to be participants, and if they get kicked out, have a “cause celebre” to put on YouTube.

Unofficial

So here we are on the Sunday after Tuesday of “election season”.  The “final unofficial” counts are almost complete.  The networks, appointing themselves to the task of declaring “winners”, may actually have gathered the courage to make their declarations.  Maybe NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox and the Associated Press will say what we all can reasonably see:  Joe Biden is the next President of the United States.  

Not that what they say actually matters.  The states will certify their results in about a week. The candidates will have the opportunity to question, or demand recounts, or whatever, after that.  The final certification of results will be the first week of December, and the Governors will certify their Electors to the Electoral College and that time. And it actually isn’t until January 6^th, 2021, that the Congress receives and counts those votes, and declares an official winner for President and Vice President (US Code §15).

Which gives Donald Trump plenty of time to question the results, stir up rumors of cheating, and deny the will of the voters.  

A time for votes, a time for count.

 A time for whining, a time for protests.

A time for courts, a time fear.

A time for a new leaders, 

I hope it’s not too late.*

(*Apologies to the Byrds and Pete Seeger for co-opting their song!!).

Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln had a recurring dream.  He was in a boat in the night, out in the water.  He was moving forward towards “…a dark indefinite shore”.  He didn’t know what was on the shore, and he always awoke before the boat arrived.  But, as Lincoln told his Cabinet on April 14^th 1865, that dream always foretold some great event, perhaps a great battle.  And since on that day a week after Appomattox, there was only one major Confederate Army left in the field, Lincoln thought that it must means their final surrender.

It would be two weeks before Confederate General Johnson surrendered to Sherman in North Carolina.  But, of course, there was an even more important major event in the meantime.  After the Cabinet meeting that night, April 14^th, Lincoln was shot and killed in Ford’s Theatre.

Slow Motion

COVID has changed our world.  Instead of the Election Night celebration or nightmare that we knew from the past four elections, we watched a slow motion count.  More like the “dimpled chad” election of 2000, or the slow “Blue Wave” of 2018, the path to Biden’s potential victory is incredibly drawn out.  We went to bed on Tuesday (for those who could) convinced that Americans turned back to Trump once again.  But Wednesday, it was Arizona that oddly gave us emotional hope.  And then we began to see the pattern of our new world of early and mail-in voting.  What used to be voting day became voting month, and what used to be a one-night count, Election Night, has stretched into ninety-six hours.  

This morning Biden edged into the lead in Georgia.  As I literally write this paragraph, the load of votes in Philadelphia were just added to the totals.  The results show Biden in the lead for Pennsylvania’s 20 Electoral Votes.  There is only one conclusion.  In spite of Trumpian anguish, the gnashing of teeth, tearing of cloth and inevitable Court battles, Joe Biden will be the 46^th President of the United States.

At least he better be.  Trumpians have warned of us a “civil war” when Trump was re-elected, of “Antifa” inspired mobs attacking the cities.  It was convincing enough that prudent merchants in urban areas began to board up their windows.  So now what?

Pick-‘Em-Up Truck War

Should we expect a reverse war now?  Will gun toting, flag flying pick-‘em-up trucks mass on the interstate highways, shutting down commerce to support their President?  Here in Pataskala, should we start boarding up our windows to keep “Trump” rioters from tearing up the suburbs?

They’ve been “conditioned” (brainwashed) to believe that all the “mail-in” ballots are “fake votes”.  Trump himself led the charge for months, and now right-wing media is screaming it on the broadest bandwidth.  Their analogy:  “I watched the game end, saw the score, and knew we won.  Now they are changing the score, cheating to win!”.  The car that drove by our “Biden sign” house last night knew it well – they screamed “Cheaters!!” into the darkness.  But of course that analogy doesn’t work – we all watched the game, and NO ONE knew the score.  We are more like those poor smiling figure skaters, sitting with flowers and stuffed animals, waiting for the judges to reach their calculations. We have waited this long ninety-six hours to find out the actual results.

But figure skating “ain’t” popular “out here”.  And I’m sure there will be more protests, more “Trump Trucker Rallies”, more “long rifles” appearing on the streets. And probably more than just “cheaters” yelled from speeding cars on our road.  Here in ex-urban Ohio, it will grow tense.

Hugh Scott

In 1974 the Supreme Court in the United States v Nixon, ordered the President to release “the tapes”.  Nixon recorded most conversations in the White House.  He hated reporters, and wanted to have direct evidence of what was said and done when it came time to write the “history” of the Nixon years.  

He “bugged” himself.  All the conversations and plans of covering up the Watergate break-in were on long reels of audiotape.  When the world found out about the tapes, the Watergate Special Prosecutor moved to seize them.  Nixon refused, claiming “executive privilege”.  

When the Supreme Court issued their decision, some of Nixon’s staff argued that they should just destroy the tapes, perhaps in a bonfire on the White House lawn.  But the Republican leaders of Congress, Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, House Minority Leader John Rhodes and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, went to the White House.  They told Nixon that he no longer had the support of the Republicans in Congress, that impeachment and conviction were now inevitable.

Nixon resigned two days later.

Out of Darkness

America is headed towards a “dark, indefinite shore”.  We cannot expect Donald Trump to concede, to gracefully leave the stage.  It’s not in his nature, and it’s also not in his own personal interest.  His financial future is tied to the “Trumpian cult” he has created.  Based on his own “victimhood”, Trump must play out the role of the aggrieved leader, illegitimately removed from office.  It’s going to drive subscriptions for “Trump TV”, coming soon to a cable network near you.  They’ll place it between CNN and MSNBC on your schedule.

We can fight this out.  I do not expect a “civil war”, and I don’t expect marauding bands of pick-‘em-up trucks to tear through my neighborhood.  But our nation will remain so severely divided that we will have to wait a whole generation to recover.

Or, like Scott, Rhodes and Goldwater, the leaders of the Republican Party, absent for so long, can finally stand-up.  They can take the walk to the White House, and support the  Constitution and the American model of government.  While not every Trump acolyte will follow, enough will to avoid the inevitable alternative.

They can steer our boat from the “dark indefinite shore”.  It’s their last best chance for legitimacy.  And it’s our best chance to move forward as a nation.

Track and Field

Election Days are long, especially when you’ve already voted.  And waiting on the results may well be longer – days longer – so I’m getting some thoughts down before we get the final “final” results.

For thirty-five years I was the head boys track coach at the local high school.  I know: it’s track, an “individual” sport.  But they have team scores in the meets, and being part of a “team” makes athletes perform above themselves.  Running “for themselves” is limited, running for the guy beside you, who has trained as hard as you have:  that makes athletes “rise up” (I know – another Hamilton reference).  

We would run eight or so Invitational meets a year.  And in most of those, we put our best team together, put them on the track or in the field, and let them go.  But for the Conference and District meets, we did a lot of “scouting” and preparation.  We wanted to win, to be Champions, and we would not only put our best team forward, but in a way to maximize our scoring.

Score Sheet

So in the weeks before the meet I would put together a score sheet:  us versus the rest of the Conference.  I would match everyone up, event by event, and try to anticipate how we would score.  There would be the “dream” meet, where everything went right.  There would be the “normal” meet, where some things would go wrong, but we would be OK.  And there was the “minimum” meet, the absolute worst we could do and still win the meet.

Why am I telling you all of this?  Because winning sports contests and winning political campaigns are very similar.  Take it from one who has done both.  So I have my Joe Biden list, my “score sheet”.  Instead of the different events, from the hundred to the mile to the pole vault to the discus, we have states.  Each state is an individual contest:  Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, and all the rest.  But all add up to the “team win”, or the Biden Presidency.

Election Day

And I spent Election Day, hoping for the “dream” election, where Texas, Georgia, Arizona and Ohio all go to Biden.  For as long as I’ve been a Democrat (that’s at least sixty-one years) I’ve believed that if EVERYONE got to vote, Democrats would win.  On Tuesday, it was time to put that to a test.  Over one hundred million people voted, before even the day of the election.  Estimates are that another sixty or seventy million more voted on the day.  So if you believe that more votes helps Democrats – then it should be the “Dream” list.

But, in almost every Conference championship meet we ran, there were moments when it looked like the “dream” meet was out the window, and we were working on the “minimum” score.  And in the past few days, there have been times when I started to think that way.  Social media doesn’t help, panic is infective, and some of my Facebook “friends” are panicking.  I’ve got as good or better information than they do, and I know better.  But that doesn’t change my indigestion.

And, no matter how well we planned our strategies, there were those meets when things fell below the minimum.   We didn’t plan on our star miler getting tripped in the race, we didn’t have a backup when our best 100-meter runner pulled a hamstring, and sometimes (though seldom) some other coach had a better “plan” than we did.

I didn’t feel that way on Election Day with the polls still open and voters lined up.  We didn’t seem to need the minimums. We had the dream solution in sight.  But then the votes started coming in.

What’s Left

The “dream” solution went out with Florida and North Carolina.  It took a bigger hit here in Ohio.  We found out something that I didn’t want to believe – that there are still many Americans who think that what Donald Trump represents is “good”.  I wrote a whole essay on that, but I can’t print it.  It’s too close to the “bone” of too many friends.

So now it’s Thursday morning, and the minimum list is the only one left:  Arizona, Georgia, or Pennsylvania – and Nevada.  That’s what our Presidency depends on.  Biden can still win, but so can Trump.  

I wadded up the checklist yesterday.  I’ve got it memorized, along with the vote totals for each state. 

Today we will know.

Florida

It was November of 2000.  The election between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W Bush was down to one state, Florida.  Out of the millions of Florida votes, the margin between the two was less than one thousand.  Florida law called for a mandatory recount, and several heavily Democratic counties began the painstaking task of examining each ballot.

The campaign staff for Bush determined that to wait for the logical outcome, the final count; was dangerous to their candidate’s chances.  So instead of allowing the count to take its course, they waited until they had a slim lead in the ongoing recount.  Then, in what today is called the “Brooks Brothers Riot”, the well dressed young Republican lawyers and staffers flown into Florida crammed in the Palm Beach Board of Elections and “stormed” the counting area.  

The members of the Board felt so threatened, they stopped the count.  Bush was winning.  The Secretary of State of Florida, at the behest of the Governor of Florida, Bush’s brother Jeb, certified the incomplete count of the election as official. The United States Supreme Court in a five to four decision, accepted that enumeration, and mandated the counting to stop.  That was five Republican appointed Justices to four Democratic appointees.

Vice President Gore gracefully conceded the election. 

In the Dark of Night 

Donald Trump learned well from his mentor, Roger Stone, one of the instigators of the Brooks Brothers Riot.  Tonight, just a few moments ago, he instigated a “riot” of his own, writ-large, by claiming that the vote counts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania must stop.  The counts there are incomplete, with millions of ballots still to be counted from heavily Democratic Milwaukee, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.  If Biden was to win those states, he could claim the Presidency. But if those cities are disenfranchised, then Trump can claim his false victory.

He promises to take his “case” to the Supreme Court.  And I will say this: John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Bennett all were lawyers in Florida on the Bush staff in that November of 2000.  It’s difficult to believe in their justice, when the justices are already tainted.

Vice President Joe Biden is not conceding. He leads in Arizona and Wisconsin, and believes if the count is complete he will be President. He rightfully demands that every vote be counted.  And surely lawyers from both sides are already on site in those cities, ready to do whatever is necessary to further their “clients’ needs.  We will see whether democracy or theft will prevail. 

Disappointed

I am immeasurably disappointed in my fellow Americans.  After all that Donald Trump has done, he still received immense numbers of votes.  Abraham Lincoln was right:  you can fool most of the people, most of the time.  Donald Trump has proven that. 

I had an argument with a former student, now a Trump supporter, about whether there would be protests after the elections.  I said that as long as the outcome was fair, there would be no need for demonstrations.  But if this election is stolen, then I can see little choice but to go to the streets, and take whatever action needed.  If the legal means of expression are dictatorially slammed shut, what else can be done?

It’s 3:00 am.  I know better than to write when I’m angry, or incredibly disappointed.  And I know that the sun will come up, soon, and that the count, and the fight, will continue. 

 Joe Biden isn’t done, and neither am I.

High Holy Day

It’s Election Day, the “High Holy Day” of American Democracy.  We’ve been lining up to vote since before the Constitution, even before the Declaration of Independence.  We voted during conflict, even the Civil War.  We voted during the last great pandemic, the Spanish Flu of 1918 ( Mr. Trump, not 1917).  America is really doing what it does best, letting the citizenry determine the leadership of the nation.

Sure, there’s all of the craziness of the Electoral College.  It used to be quaint, a relic of a bygone time that we still respected.  After seeing that system supersede the “counted will” of the people twice in the past score of years, I know longer see it as “traditional”.   But that debate is for another time.  Two Hundred and Seventy is the magic number, the majority that anoints a new President for four years.

We may not know in the next eighteen hours who won the Presidency this round.  That’s not the product of some subversion of the process or nefarious motive.  No, we are going to have the largest election in American history.  By the time early voting closed yesterday, over 100 million people voted for President.  In 2016 127 million voted.  Today it’s very likely that another fifty million or more will exercise their right.  With all of our “arcane” counting methods, that’s going to take some time, perhaps more than a “call” before midnight.

And with all of the talk and nonsense about the Trump team “sending in the lawyers”, it’s really a matter of them saying, “We are losing, what can we do?”  Winners don’t talk about lawyers and not counting votes, only Losers do.  It’s like the wining football team complaining about the officiating – they don’t really care.  I like candidates who Win elections.

Two-Dollar Bills

Speaking of arcane laws, Michigan has one that says you cannot pay drivers to take people to the polls.  It’s left over from the 19^th century, when “bandwagons,” literally wagons with bands on them, would go down the street handing out two-dollar bills for people to jump on and go vote.  It became a mark of dishonor:  having a two-dollar bill meant you sold your vote.  It also meant you “got on the bandwagon”.   It’s why folks stopped using the two-dollar bill.

And one of the great advances of the 19^th Century was the use of the “secret ballot”.  Before 1884, everyone knew how everyone else voted (thus the guaranteed two-dollars).  It was only after 1884 that the vote in most states was secret.  And it wasn’t even an American invention – the other name for the “secret” ballot is the Australian ballot.

So if it’s a secret ballot, how do they talk about, “Trump doing better in early voting in Florida than Biden”?  The answer is, they only know that John Smith of Sebastian, Florida has voted early.  And they know that John Smith is a registered Republican.  So the assumption (you know how that goes) is that John Smith voted for Donald Trump.  But they don’t really know that, and when they count the votes, they won’t ever know which candidate John Smith actually voted for.  What if there are a lot of Republicans who decided that they didn’t want to vote for Trump, and chose someone else? 

I voted early, and I’m a registered Democrat.  As it turned out, I did vote for Joe Biden (no surprise) but they really don’t know that.   So in an election when a number of notable Republicans, including the Lincoln Project folks and the former Governors of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio publicly committed for Joe Biden – who knows?

Vote Early

It’s very strange not to be going to the polls today.  In a pandemic world, it made a lot more sense to vote early (not the old Chicago line – “vote early and vote often”).  But I will do a “drive-by” of my polling place and maybe a couple of others, just to see how things are going.  

Here in Pataskala, we definitely live in “Trump Country”.  But our town has the right attitude. Yes Donald Trump will win here, but my neighbors are still waving as they drive by our Biden sign, talking to us on the street, and were “up in arms” when some kids stole our original signs.  Maybe they knew what would happen, from two Biden signs we now have five, plus two Biden pumpkins.  I’m sure they’ll be glad to see them go, but “they’ll defend to the death our right to say it”. 

Random Thoughts

Two last oddities, then you should go VOTE!!!!!  The first:  remember the “zero year curse”? It was a staple of Eighth Grade American History, that every President elected in a “zero year” after 1840 died in office.  It was supposed to be a curse that Tenskwatawa, the brother of Tecumseh, placed on General William Henry Harrison . Harrison was the General when Tecumseh was killed at the battle of Thames River.  Harrison, elected President in 1840, caught pneumonia at his own inauguration and died thirty days later. 

It held true – Harrison, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, and Kennedy all were elected in a “zero year” and died in office.  It wasn’t until 1980 that Ronald Reagan “broke” the curse, and George W. Bush followed suit.  It’s 2020 and the curse is long gone – but it was a good story to keep eighth graders involved in class.  

And the second oddity has nothing to do with politics, just dogs.  It’s the first week of “standard time”, and our dogs don’t get it.  Now we are up at five, and they think dinner should be served at four.  Buddy, our oldest, and I sat down and had a long talk about railroads, Savings Time and Standard Time, but somehow he didn’t care.  He wasn’t waiting another hour for dinner!!!

Have a good day and long night.  However it turns out, we are engaged in the process that makes the United States different from many other countries.  With all of our problems, we should celebrate this tradition.  

And a Biden win would make it even better. 

Civil War

The doomsayers are loud among us.  “We are headed towards a new Civil War!!” they cry out.  “ANTIFA is coming to burn your combine,” (not making that up, after one with Trump flags burned in a field in rural Nebraska).  “The Proud Boys will be at our polling place”.  Some demonstrations in the streets turned violent last summer.  Some took advantage of Black Lives Matter to burn, loot, and destroy.  And some police officers aren’t helping: young children were pepper-sprayed this weekend at a voting march in North Carolina.  So-called “Militias,” heavily armed with assault rifles and combat gear are strutting around the State House lawns.  It feels tense.

And it doesn’t help that the President of the United States is sowing the seeds of discontent.  For months, President Trump has warned that “mail-in ballots” (except, of course, HIS mail-in ballot in Florida) were fraudulent.  He is now poised to attack the election results in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota.  He will “short-circuit” the results – declaring a faux “victory” whenever the count suits his purpose.  And he claims that “his” Supreme Court will “back him up”.

Those of us who spent four years in the “Resistance” are ready to flood the streets, defending the election process against Trump’s outrageous claims.  And then there are the “Trucking Trumpsters”: pickup trucks with Trump flags flapping, “parading” on the Interstates and disrupting traffic.  Things grew more than just inconvenient when shots were fired on the outer-belt here in Columbus, or they surrounded a Biden/Harris campaign bus in Austin, Texas.

Are we headed to the downfall of the American democracy?  Are we so divided, that no winner will be accepted?

History

Historians spend a lifetime studying the past and trying to apply it to the present.  And to historians, there is no time in American history more dramatic than the years before the Civil War, leading up to the election of 1860.  The Supreme Court’s 1857 ham handed acceptance of slavery, the Dred Scott decision, made it seem that there was no legislative means to resolve the crisis.  The frustration with that helped lead to John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry in October of 1859, an armed insurrection against that government.  

Slavery was not only a moral issue; it was an economic one.  The immorality of owning slaves was rationalized by the need of the South to use slaves to support their cotton growing economy.  Abolitionism did not provide an answer for the Southern aristocracy, heavily indebted with their slaves as collateral for their loans.

The media of the time, newspapers, exploded on both sides of the issue of slavery.  John Brown, executed by the United States two months later, lit the fuse to the powder keg.  The polarization of the nation was completed in the election of 1860, where the Republican candidate, Lincoln, only won 40% of the popular vote but gained a majority of the Electoral College.  The runner-up in the popular vote, the “middle” candidate Stephen Douglas, got 30% of the popular vote, but only 12 Electoral votes.  Third place pro-slavery candidate John Breckenridge, had 18% of the popular vote, but carried many of the slave states for 72 Electoral vote.

We were a nation divided, politically, geographically, economically and socially.  

Rhymes

We are a divided nation today, driven by media that exacerbates our differences.  We have a President who does not have majority support, and a Court that seems to be weighing in on one side of political issues.  It’s not surprising that many see that “rhyming” with 1860, and resulting in the same outcome.

But it is not the same.  While there are many issues in our election today, the overwhelming crisis of COVID has changed it all.  We are now in a world where one side looks to science and fact to solve the problems, and one side does not.  It is not the “moral” question of slavery; it is a much clearer choice.

And economically there are effective solutions in science.  Controlling the COVID spread by simple tools, masks, social distancing and crowd control, will allow for much of the economy to open.  The alternative, what the President advocates we do, is to open without controlling the spread.  That will hamstring our economy for years to come.  

Slavery and COVID are not the same.  And the grievances that existed before COVID, the newly Trump empowered “victims” of the “left leaning” government, are real, but not so powerful to bring about a revolution.

Victims

Donald Trump has a fallback plan, the same one he had before the surprise 2016 election results.  “Trump TV” will be based on his victimhood, and he will continue to make a living on feeding the polarization of America.  But to be an effective victim, he must have an ultimate “wrong”. And that “wrong” will be the election of 2020, which he will forever claim was “stolen” from him by us “leftist” Democrats.

So be it.  But he doesn’t need violence to get that done.  He needs folks willing to watch his show, listen to his rhetoric, and put their money on “MAGA” hats.  He needs fellow “victims” to finance his upcoming loan calls, and violence won’t help that.  Trump needs their disaffection, not action.

For those looking for a “Kum-by-ya” moment at the Biden inauguration:  I wish it were so.  I hope that those reasonable folks who found an outlet through Trump, will be more American than Trumpian.  But more likely, our divisions will continue.  There’s too much money to be made by commentators on Fox, and the Trump family too.  

But we aren’t going to war.

Election Day

So, after one thousand, four hundred, sixty-one days, we have finally reached another Presidential Election Day. I wasn’t at all sure that we’d make it through “THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION” (Hamilton reference – “the Adams Administration”). But here we are. Hard to imagine: we are in the middle of a global pandemic, snatching children from parents on the border, and young Black men are at higher risk of dying from homicide than any other cause (CDC). Joe Biden, after trying for thirty years, is finally getting his shot at the Presidency and Donald Trump is campaigning for a second term, and a second chance. A decade ago, no one would have believed it as a movie script.

Margin of Error

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a long essay, Likely Voters, on polling and the Presidential election. I warned that ignoring the “margin of error” could lead to “shock and awe” on election night.  The most recent example is from Quinnipiac, a very reputable poll with a “B+” rating from “Five-Thirty Eight”. Their most recent Ohio poll showed Joe Biden with 48% of the vote to Trump’s 43%.  Biden in the lead by 5% in Ohio seems more than extraordinary.  

But in the fine print, Quinnipiac notes there is a 2.9%  +/- margin of error in the poll.  So Biden could be as high as 50.9%, or as low as 45.1%.  Trump could be as high as 45.9%, even ahead of Biden, or as low as 40.1%. It definitely shows Ohio to be much closer than the “gut check – signs on the highway” Trump feeling you get.  And while I’d rather be Biden in the poll, don’t lose track of the margin of error.  We did in 2016.

I also wrote an essay, Electoral Math, laying out the path to the Electoral votes that both Trump and Biden need to reach 270, the number to win the Presidency.  Assuming Biden wins all the states Hillary Clinton won, he starts with 233 Electoral Votes.  Trump has more states but with fewer votes, and he starts with 125.

Florida-Florida-Florida

Since Mr. Trump has the harder road to 270, there are key states that will tell us early what may happen.  Florida is already counting the early vote, and those numbers will be available soon after the polls close on Tuesday.  Since in many parts of Florida, 80% or more of the total is early vote, we will have a good idea of what’s going on there – early.  If we see that Biden is running ahead of Clinton’s 2016 totals, and that Trump is “under-performing” his 2016 effort, then it may well be Biden’s day.

So what are the “clues” to look for?  President Trump is polling well with the Cuban/American community, better than he did in 2016.  If that holds up, that might win the state.  On the other hand, Biden seems to be doing much better than Clinton did with older Americans.  If that stays true, particularly on Florida’s Gulf Coast, than it will impact more than just one state.  Many of those “snow-bird” Floridians came from the Midwest – Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  If they’re going for Biden, so might their “brethren” left in the cold north.

If Biden is at Clinton levels, then we know that Florida is going to be extremely close.  That doesn’t mean that Biden is going to lose, but it does mean that a “Biden Blue Wave” is probably not in the cards.  A close election in Florida probably portends a close election in the Midwest, and therefore the nation.  By the way, if Florida does go to Biden – it’s over.  Get a nightcap, in celebration or sadness depending on your view, and go to bed.

Early Tells

Ohio will also be a relatively early “call” on election night.  Again, if Biden is running well ahead of the Clinton number of 2016, even if he doesn’t win the state, it means that the rest of the Midwest is likely to “return to Blue”.  And if Biden wins Ohio (or Florida), it’s a solid indication that the election is over, and Biden is the next President.

Georgia may also be an early finisher.  Democrats have lusted after Georgia’s electoral votes for years, but it’s been since Bill Clinton in 1992 that the Peach State went Blue.  If Atlanta and the suburbs can overcome the rural parts of the state, it will be because of Stacey Abrams and her amazing efforts to counter Republican voter suppression.  And, if Georgia goes for Biden, it’s time for that nightcap. 

After Florida, Ohio and Georgia, the next results to watch carefully are from Texas.  Something’s changed in the Lone Star State.  More people have voted already, than voted in the entire 2016 election.  What that means is still unclear, but theoretically there is a large portion of Democrats voting who didn’t in 2016. If that’s true, it could be the culmination of the work Beto O’Rourke started in his Senate campaign two years ago. 

Texas turning “Blue” would be a total game changer.  The last time Texas did, I was twenty and working for the 1976 Carter campaign – so it’s been a little while.  Texas has the second biggest Electoral Vote in the nation, with 38.  Simple math – Biden wins the 233 expected, then Texas at 38, and he is the next President.  Have a nightcap – good or bad – and go to bed – it’s over.

Mail-In Votes

For the past four years we have been replaying the 2016 election. Clinton lost the “Blue Wall” states – Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Out of the thirteen million votes cast in those three, Trump won by a total of 77744 votes. That’s 0.6%. The polling indicates that Wisconsin and Michigan should be solid Biden states, though still statistically within the margins of error. And while Biden holds a steady lead in Pennsylvania too, the race there seems to be tightening.

If Florida, Texas, and Ohio all go for Trump then Biden is back to the 2016 “Blue Wall” defense.  And that’s when everything is going to get sticky.

All three states are relatively new to mail-in voting.  And in all three, the Republican Party has filed lawsuits in court against counting mail-in ballots that arrive late.  Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee, the US Postal Service is failing to deliver on time almost half the time.  So if you are looking for the nightmare, a 2000 Bush/Gore Florida election scenario – look no farther than the Federal District Courts in those three states.  If the outcome comes down to the mail-in ballots, expect to see a “full court” (hah!) press by the Trump campaign to throw them out.

Expectations

So what are my expectations for Tuesday night?  As my family will tell you, I am an optimist when it comes to Democratic Presidential candidates.  I thought that Al Gore and Hillary Clinton would both be President.  And while they both did win the popular vote, we still had to live through the Bush and Trump Presidencies.  

I feel that there is a sea change occurring in American politics.  So to crawl out on a limb (which my Trumpian friends will surely take pleasure sawing off) I think we are going to see a Blue “Tsunami”.  Biden is going to win, big.  Perhaps Florida big, perhaps even Georgia, Arizona and Ohio big.  I’m struggling with Texas big, but maybe.  But I do think that Biden will drag the US Senate with him, getting Senate seats in Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Georgia (maybe two) and North Carolina.  I think the Dems will hold the Michigan seat, though I don’t see how to hang onto Doug Jones in Alabama. 

And don’t forget that there’s a fight for the Senate in Iowa, and Montana, and even Alaska as well. Oh and wouldn’t it be sweet if Harrison beat Graham in South Carolina. So a Senate that is now 53 Republicans to 47 Democrats could end up 57 Dems to 43 Republicans. Sorry Mitch, game over.

If you’re going to predict, why not go big? So vote if you haven’t, and get prepared for Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning, if you have. It’s almost “game day”, and you might as well enjoy the suspense. It’s popcorn, beer, antacids, and a final nightcap. That might end up being a “Bloody Mary” – sometime after dawn on Wednesday morning.