It’s over. At that point, the outcome can’t be changed. New electors can’t be appointed in any state, by legislatures or any other means. No time machine exists to undo the meetings of each state’s electors that already have occurred.
There is nothing for Congress to do except to accept that Biden has won based on a majority of the electoral college ballots cast on Monday.
Of course, Congress still must receive and count these electoral college votes and formally pronounce Biden the winner, in a special joint session on Jan. 6. But that will be a mere formality. No officially sanctioned slates of rival electors — from state legislatures, as previously feared (and urged by President Trump), for example — exist for Congress to decide between. Republican senators can go ahead now and publicly acknowledge the result.
Some people can’t deal with that.
Trump signaled that he will continue to challenge the results of the 2020 election even after the electoral college meets Monday in most state capitols to cast votes solidifying Joe Biden’s victory.
In a Fox News interview that aired Sunday morning, Trump repeated his false claims of election fraud and said his legal team will continue to pursue challenges, despite the Supreme Court’s recent dismissal of a long-shot bid to overturn the results in four states Biden won.
“No, it’s not over,” Trump told host Brian Kilmeade in the interview, which was taped Saturday at the Army-Navy game at the U.S. Military Academy. “We keep going, and we’re going to continue to go forward. We have numerous local cases. We’re, you know, in some of the states that got rigged and robbed from us. We won every one of them. We won Pennsylvania. We won Michigan. We won Georgia by a lot.”
And I got an e-mail from Publishers Clearing House that says I might be a winner.
What I think disturbs me is that a lot of people can’t deal with it and lash out, including the violence on the streets from those right-wingers who said would be the result of Trump winning another term and that the left couldn’t deal with it.
Nearly three dozen people were arrested during a night of unrest in downtown Washington that began Saturday with rallies supporting President Trump and descended into chaos and violence as a group with ties to white nationalism roamed the streets looking to fight.
One of those arrested was 29-year-old Phillip Johnson of the District, who was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon in connection with at least one of four stabbings that occurred.
For most of the day, police largely kept opposing factions separated, at times frustrating the Proud Boys, a male-chauvinist organization that supports Trump’s attempts to reverse an election he lost.
It’s not exactly Berlin in 1935, but it’s coming from the same mind-set.
Ever the optimist — and counting on a goldfish-level of short-term memory — I think that by the time we get to January 6, which is when Congress will officially certify that Joe Biden won, Trump will be grumbling to himself in South Florida (and trying to figure out how to dodge a subpoena from the Southern District of New York on January 21), and Americans will be lining up to get their Covid-19 vaccinations and wondering what name the Cleveland Baseball Team will call themselves from now on.
Sometimes it’s a good thing to be easily distracted.
]]>For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
I’m still frightened. Nothing — not the Mueller investigation, the revelations coming from various sources, or chatter about impeachment or invoking the 25th Amendment — has calmed my fear that he is still capable of doing something that puts us and the rest of the world in peril. As for the second bullet point, we are seeing faint glimmers that disillusionment is happening in the nooks and crannies of America where he can do no wrong, and no amount of tweeting and bullshit from Fox News can turn around his dismal approval numbers. But that just means that fully 1/3 of the electorate still approve of him. Even his failures — Obamacare yet survives and the deportations haven’t happened — haven’t dimmed the hopes of the dim.
Obviously I’m not an economist because if I was I would have known that the economy lags behind and the continued growth and low unemployment rate are a result of Obama’s policies. Of course Trump is taking credit for it.
The Syrian civil war goes on but it’s not dominating the news cycles, and ISIS is a lessening factor. I don’t know if it’s sheer exhaustion. The refugee crisis goes on but with a lesser magnitude.
Trump rescinded some of the Obama administration’s changes in our relations with Cuba but not enough to return us to Cold War status. The blockade, such as it is, enters its 57th year.
Charlottesville and Trump’s tacit support of the Nazis proved that to be true, more’s the pity.
I lost two uncles and a nephew since I wrote that.
They traded Justin Verlander. Yeah, he helped the Astros win the World Series, but…
Okay, now on to predictions.
Okay, friends; it’s your turn.
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