Biden Wins Again, Again, Again, Again, Again
Posted on December 14, 2020 Posted by John Scalzi 76 Comments
There are still Hawaii’s electoral votes to count, but they’re electorially superfluous at this point. California sent Biden (and Harris!) over the top in the electoral votes, sealing Biden’s election to the presidency. By some estimations, thanks to Trump’s steadfast refusal to accept reality, multiple lawsuits and several ultimately pointless recounts, this is the 16,912th time Biden has won the 2020 presidential election. And indeed Trump was belatedly correct: I did get tired of all that winning. But the good news is: It’s done now.
Also, to the objectors and naysayers, I refer you to this tweet I posted. Please read it as often as necessary for it to sink in, and for those of you who have people who need to read it, feel free to forward it on to them:
Use those exact words! Repeat as necessary!
(No, seriously, it’s over. If you think Congress isn’t going to ratify these votes, you almost certainly literally don’t understand how the process works at this point, not in the least because any extraordinarily far-fetched scenario that doesn’t end up with a President Biden ends up with an Acting President Pelosi, not a President Trump. He’s done, over, toast. Stop freaking out. Believe it.)
Congratulations to the nation! We could use the rest.
— JS
Also, for the ever-living love of Christ Almighty, please don’t post either hand-wringing posts about not being sure Biden’s really the next president, or posts arguing that no, there’s still a way for Trump to pull it out. There’s not, and honestly at this point I’m fucking tired of pretending in either direction. Biden won, Trump’s done. Accept it, no matter where on the political spectrum you are.
And no, there’s not gonna be a coup either. Stop it.
I – and millions of others – are so very glad and share your…tweeted sentiments. The relief already on social media is palpably…palpable.
Thanks for sharing with us through this long extended process, btw.
Awesome! Congratulations once again, President Biden….great post!!!!
Trump is like a villain from a horror movie. You chop off pieces of it, yet it comes back.
I’m so fricking glad there won’t be a coup this year. And all it took was an incompetent incumbent and the highest voter turnout in a generation!
It’s kind of like being an epidemiologist: if the bad thing doesn’t happen they’ll call you Chicken Little; if it does happen they’ll be mad you didn’t do something sooner. It’s not that all the mechanisms where democracy could be subverted weren’t there, they just weren’t used. Thank God.
Now please dear heaven let us win the GA runoffs so we can pass some long belated reforms before this happens again.
Not so much “comes back,” but won’t leave despite defeat after defeat, like Monty Python’s Black Knight.
But as with the Black Knight, it’s not as if the outcome is going to change.
In response to the Republicans who said to us in 2016 “we won, get over it, libtard!”, I say “we won, get over it, M*****!”
Elision for bipartisanship and civility.
Well, the Puppies need SOMETHING to gin up outrage over, now that they’ve lost at trying to bend the Hugos to their will.
But it’s really about Ethics in Political Journalism….
But we could briefly end up with a President Pence. Trump might resign before Inauguration Day, either so he can quietly and quickly leave the country (probably to somewhere that doesn’t extradite to the US) and/or so Pence can pardon him. That would have few other consequences, but it would make Biden President #47 rather than #46.
I firmly believe that vice president Pence will find any reason in the book not to read those votes into the record on January 6. My guess is that he will conveniently find someone who might’ve been exposed and go into quarantine so he doesn’t have to pronounce the results.
Personally, I feel such a weight lifted. I just want to be bored by the news.
Thank you. I’ve really been worried about whether the EC would progress properly. REALLY worried, since sanity has been within our grasp. I feel better now, and you, as always, said it best.
Second. Best. Birthday. Present. Ever, (After my nephew).
Yes, he’s President-elect Biden and nothing will change that! It almost makes Donald and Rudy’s Neverending Lawsuits worth the tedium-almost.
Huzzah!!!!
The Senate is still in play. No rest until January 6th.
I reserve the right to freak out indefinitely, going forward. Clowns are scary.
And! It’s Official! Biden-Harris Won! Again! and Again and Again and Again and Again They Won!. Dayem! They must have over a thousand Electoral College votes by now they’ve won some states so many times!
Hey! Biden-Harris Won!
shoggoth is the biggest loser evah hahahah. Sorry can’t help myself, Because reasons.
16,912 loses in a row makes him the #1 Loser for the record. Or just the Biggest Loser Period.
I don’t think I will ever get over it. The number of otherwise intelligent friends and family who bought his bullshit scares the crap out of me. If the election was actually stolen and all legal recourse failed then civil war is a perfectly reasonable response.
At long last, I finally feel that I can bake that Schadenfreude Pie. I’ve had the ingredients since November 7; just didn’t quite dare to assemble them in a pie pan and bake them. But now I think I can risk it.
Isn’t it such great news? Counting the days until Deranged Donald is gone!
Well said, John. I feel for Biden, though – he faces tasks that will make the Twelve Labours look like weekend chores.
Funny that, 4 years ago when the shoe was on the other foot, so many sore losers (Pelosi being the chief sourpuss) spent the remaining years doing exactly what you are haranguing against now. Smells like hypocrisy. But that is most people’s unabashed way of behaving these days. Anything is justified if they are the ones doing it and high crimes if someone else they do not approve of does the same. To everyone on both sides: grow up. Integrity and grace are adult traits and America could sure use some actual adults attempting to run the country.
@Becca Cole: Pointing out the corruption, nepotism and incompetence of the Trump regime does not equal using your stacked courts to try to overturn the democratic process. Clinton conceded the day after the election, But thanks for playing.
I suspect McConnell and the rest of the GOP miscreants will spend the next 2 years thoroughly jamming the gears of government and then due to the US’s memory span of a goldfish, give the house back to the GOP lunatics.
christallmighty, I’ve had half a dozen ijiots threaten me with civil war –today– alone. The righty tighty brigade sure has their panties in a bunch about it….
As a sports fan in the Washington DC area, I find it highly amusing that our local professional (supposedly) football team has notched more wins in November and December than the soon-to-be-ex-President.
Thank you John for saying that. It is long, long past the time to tell Trump and the GOP to just shut up and go away. Whine, whine, whine. How is that masculine and strong? I can understand that this is just one more con game by Trump, but why is everybody else playing his game? Especially the media, which acts like a propaganda machine for Trump.
So, to Trump and his cult supporters, shut the fuck up,
With the electoral vote and starting Covid-19 vaccination in the US today I felt joy (which has been in short supply).
Funny that, 4 years ago when the shoe was on the other foot, so many sore losers (Pelosi being the chief sourpuss) spent the remaining years doing exactly what you are haranguing against now.
Funny…that did NOT happen.
Don’t gaslight us. Don’t lie to us. And don’t pull that “both sides” crap. It’s sloppy and intellectually lazy.
On the other hand, Trump continues to piss on the campfire and is likely saving a few turds for the punchbowl. And then there’s Mitch. . . .
Never underestimate the capacity of a spoiled child to make trouble. I suspect that Rachel Maddow will have plenty to talk about for a while yet.
If you’re in need of more proof, then here’s some.
The bookies paid out the moment California’s votes were cast.
Which is nice, because it paid for my nephews’ Christmas presents.
Earlier today, at about the time you posted this article, I paid 90¢ on PredictIt (a political prediction market) for shares that will pay out $1 (minus some fees) once the site administrators determine that Biden has in fact won the election beyond any reasonable doubt.
This is up a bit from the 86¢ I paid a couple weeks ago, but it’s still low enough to cause me to have some small doubts about my sanity. If a bunch of people still believe strongly enough that Trump has a chance to put money on the line at 10:1 odds, surely there must be something to it, right? But the thing is that…no, no there isn’t.
This observation has nothing to do with fraud, but we still should never trust electronic voting machines. Unlike ATMS, which are used billions of times a year, resulting in every opporunity to eliminate the bugs that matter, voting machines are only used a couple of times a year. That makes their software always in beta test mode.
I think that fraud is much less likely than errors that don’t get corrected in time, like in 2004 I saw som returns from somewhere on the east coast where the tally for one candidate hit 30,000 and then started going backward. I suspect a simple buffer overflow area.
My county (King Co. in WA State) is the second larges county in the US by population, and it’s election s department is very well run. We have 31 cites, parts or all of threee congressional districts, parts or all of 17 state legislative districts, and a whole lot of school borads and water districts. We have paper ballots for 99% of the electorate (blind people can opt to go to the elections department and use a machine with audio output and a paper printout), which are tabulated by scanners that are NOT hooked up to the Internet. The results are confirmet by random hand count auditing of selected countywide contests. If a voting process cannot be audited, be very suspicious of it,
There is actually one case of real voter fraud that I have heard about. A married couple had their ballots mailed to them, and we get them three weeks before election day. One of the pair died, and the survivor filled in the second ballot and successfully faked the deceased spouse’s signature to vote twice. This is not really serious, as voter rolls are regularly cross-referenced with obituary notices. So this can only happen once,
Mr Scalzi, sir, you are wrong. Trump failed even in that campaign promise – I am so very NOT tired of all the winning. Not that I feel the need to win some more, but I still would not be unduly put out in the least to win some more.
I am genuinely happy that voter turnout was the highest in 100 years, and just wish we could that kind of turnout all the time. It shouldn’t take an existential threat to get people to the polls!
Also, as a Washington State resident, I very strongly advocate all mail-in voting. Washington – and a few other states – have had all mail-in elections for 10 years or more. Easy peasy, no worries about weather, or standing in line forever, or there not being enough voting machines in your district… but of course the Party that relies on voter suppression to win elections is not real keen on having MORE mail-in voting. They’re already working on ways to restrict voting in Georgia.
Those exact words are good words, but I also rather like “seditious cockwombles” from Mike Dunford on Twitter
Those are quite flexible words. They could be arranged in lots of different orders without you ending up in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I haven’t made an actual Schadenfreude pie, but for Thanksgiving I made a walnut pie, and one of the recipes recommended making cranberry-walnut pie with dried cranberries in it, so why not, one side of the pie got dried cranberries also. Worked pretty well.
Lots of threats of violence and worries. And yet the voting proceeded with mostly no incidents. It kind of feels like it’s all just that much hot air. I wonder how long the Myth of the Lost Election will last. Hopefully not as long and not as powerful as creationism in US.
[Deleted for tiresome kool-aid drinking bullshit. Anyone at this point who is says they will never consider Biden president is not doing it because they have “doubts,” it’s because they are a truculent pissbaby who is mad they don’t get their way any more, and I don’t see the value in pretending otherwise – JS]
@ Janne:
“I wonder how long the Myth of the Lost Election will last.”
We still haven’t gotten over American Exceptionalism, or the American Dream, for which there is clear evidence of absence. My guess is that the Lost Election will stick around for a while.
Congratulations from your neighbour to the north! So happy for you (and for us; honestly, it’s been like living next to a meth house, waiting for it to blow)!
[Deleted for being pathetic. Flounce away, dude — JS]
And I’m prooooooud to be a Californian, where we’re mostly idiot free /
And I won’t forget the jerks who tried, to take my rights from me/And I’d gladly stand up for democracy and defend it still today.
On his treasonous ass, Trump did laaaaaaaand/
We’ve saved the USA!
Now we’ll have to sit through the coming objections in congress and withstand the violent tantrums from angry anti-democratic neo-Nazis bent on storming Washington dc, murdering their political opponents and burning the constitution on a pyre in the name of permanent fascistic rule.
Biden will be president, and I’ll be glad to have some competence at the wheel.
Still, the fact that nearly 75, 000, 000 people managed to validate every anti-American sentiment held around the globe should be more shocking than it is.Not a good look for the good ole US of A. ☹
Aaaaand I see I’ve missed the chance to stomp a parlor puppet into the mud. :(
Just like John to pore cold water on all my fun. LOL!
My biggest wish this Christmas is that the new Congress enacts some reforms to keep this dumpster-fire of a presidency from ever happening again.
My list includes:
Requiring all candidates for/holders of federal office (appointed or elected) to release their tax returns going back ten years
Requiring all members of Congress, all Cabinet members, all members of the Supreme Court, the President, and the Vice President, to completely move all investments into a blind trust
Investing in paper-based voting machine technology
Forbidding “dark money” PACs
Requiring that candidates give any campaign funds that are not used during the election to the US Treasury to be used to pay down the National Debt (it won’t matter other than symbolically but it will keep elections from making politicians rich)
I believe that you retweeted someone’s comment: “Biden has won so many times in Michigan that he’s legally required to change his name to Ohio State.” Which sure was funny.
I am glad that USians were good enough to remove DJT from office.
What if the next Republican president is as malign as DJT, but is as competent as (say) Nixon? Heaven help the USA when that happens.
@ Carol and also …..
Folks should go easy on the gloating. I think it would be helpful if everyone would avoid emulating the behavior of the folks in 2016.
@David Huss
The GOP should stop with their idiotic shenanigans if they don’t want to hear gloating (and well-deserved scorn) when they fail.
David”go easy on the gloating”
These people have been disenfranchising voters for DECADES, and now they are pushing baseless conspiracy theories of voter fraud and threatening CIVIL WAR.
And then you show up with some story about Rudy the Red Nosed Fascist and how none of us will let him play his Grsnd Conspiracy Theories followed by his Threats of Violence games???
Of all the threats in this world today, the folks you decided to stand up for were the Red Nosed Fascists and how we wont let them play?
Telling people facts and truths to their lies and conspiracy nonsense isnt gloating. Defending democracy when people are trying to tear it down isnt “gloating”.
A-fucking-men.
Feeling very cheery about being a Californian right about now. I know this year has more or less raised our collective flinch-level to “omigod there may still be more horrors to come,” but as far as Trump is concerned… yeah. The long national nightmare is winding down.
ColonelMustard, et al.:
Lower the temps, please.
Quote
JohnD
December 15, 2020, 10:01 am
My biggest wish this Christmas is that the new Congress enacts some reforms to keep this dumpster-fire of a presidency from ever happening again.
My list includes:
Requiring all candidates for/holders of federal office (appointed or elected) to release their tax returns going back ten years
/quote
While I like the idea, the problem is that the requirements to be president are spelled out in the constitution. Implementing something like this would require an amendment, or an extremely unlikely Supreme court ruling.
==========
I’m hoping that Trump starts to become more like H. Ross Perot was back in the 90’s – someone who is increasingly seen as irrelevant. I don’t know that will happen because Trump’s hold on his followers is almost supernatural.
I think that other GOP contenders will start to draw themselves away from Trump, because for all of his ink, he was indeed impeached, he never even hit 50% approval, and he lost the election.
Trump’s nomination back in 2016 seemed to be a reaction to Romney’s election loss. Seems that the GOP decided, hey, reasonably conservative isn’t working, might as well try for batshit crazy. Well, batshit crazy might get you in office on an electoral college fluke, but it doesn’t get you re-elected.
Fingers crossed for that, at any rate.
Hey David?
As for going easy on the gloating, as a member of several groups on the GOP’s literal and figurative chopping block, I most certainly will not.I wouldn’t do so even if they hadn’t attempted to yank this nation into the third world via 60s era suppression and disenfranchisement.
Fuck them up the nose with a rusty fork, and fuck anyone who tries to gaslight and guilt-trip their targets into singing Kumbaya with people who would love nothing more than to terrorize, torture and kill them.
What’s happened here is that a bunch of disgruntled, status anxious crackpots and white supremacists, many of them elected officials, gripped democracy from behind, shoved a gun into its neck and threatened to blow its brains all over the constitution unless Trump was reinstalled as King of the United States.
They rammed Serena Joy through to the SCOTUS in hopes that a six to three majority would aid and abet their anti-American bullshit.
Scotus told them to have several seats, twice.
I can be marginally enthusiastic about a Biden presidency and jubilant as hell that the domestic terrorists and glorified suicide bombers who tried to plunge my country into an autocratic, bigotopian pit were neutralized.
The voters and those republican officials with spines did the equivalent of storming the room and taking them down
Now it’s all over but the congressional tantrums and angry white boy riots which, surprise surprise, won’t be nearly as reviled or derided as were the truth-based, post-2016 election probes and BLM protests, peaceful or otherwise, that arose when people said “No More” to lynchings.
There will be violence and snarling, and the still funded police will either do their jobs or they won’t, but Joseph R. Biden and Kamala D. Harris will be sworn in as President and Vice President of the United States.
Nya.
My Christmas present will be a respite from political stupidity.
Oh could we have an acting president Pelosi, just for like a weekend. It would surely send the proud boys over the edge.
And while,I’m sure we avoided a constitutional crisis this time, you can be sure a more competent demagogue is taking notes for next time.
Steven C.
While I like the idea, the problem is that the requirements to be president are spelled out in the constitution. Implementing something like this would require an amendment, or an extremely unlikely Supreme court ruling.
The Congress is allowed to add requirements to the job; for example, they made record-preservation obligatory after Nixon’s tape fiasco. I would expect a fight at the SCotUS over it, but they would likely hold it was constitutional especially if it was applied to members of Congress as well as Executive and Judicial branch members.
However, this is all moot because we both know that there is no way it would pass.
Shortly after the election, my biggest fear is that the losers would react violently, possibly some kind of attempted coup. I counted on three milestones to pass before I would relax even a little: electoral vote, congress ratifying the vote and the inauguration. One down two to go. Even after the election there may be some kind of violence. I hope not. It’s possible that all of those shouting for a violent uprising, secession, assassination or something else are just blowing off steam. I hope so. Time will tell.
@Rembrant, I think it’s a mistake to attribute support for Trumpism to a lack of intelligence or information. They do so because they’re getting an emotional reward out of allying themselves with his cult, even though it requires them to do Olympic-level mental gymnastics and to convince themselves of a whole pallet of easily-disprovable facts to do so.
These are the folks I’m concerned about (Content/Trigger Warning for Idiocy):
“•“For everything that is wrong with this world there is a j** behind it.”
•“I love laying in bed and rubbing my wet pussy to officers killing n***** men.”
•“N***** lives don’t matter.”
•“AIDS kills f*** dead.”
•“THIS ISN’T OVER YET – NEVER BET AGAINST PRESIDENT TRUMP! WE ARE MANY – WE ARE MIGHTY WE ARE ARMED – WE ARE UNITED WE ARE TRUMP PATRIOTS – AND WE ARE PISSED! #SayYourPrayersDemocrats #MayGodHaveMercyOnYourSoulBecauseWeWont”
•“Let’s see them try to enter the people[sic] house and attempt to remove our President, a National Treasure!!! Death will become them!”
•“This woman is Evil Incarnate. We Cannot Allow This Satanic Shill To Enter Office. (Kamala Harris’ eyes turn completely black several times during this interview, she is full of unclean spirits ECHO THIS PLEASE)”
•“Voting will not remove them. The only things n****** understand are pain and fear”
•“IN WAR, IT’S KILL OR BE KILLED. WE NEED 50 MILLION ARMED AMERICAN PATRIOTS TO STORM DC AND KILL ALL THE SWAMP CRIMINALS NOW!!”
And these were the nice ones.
@ Sarah Marie:
“They rammed Serena Joy through to the SCOTUS in hopes that a six to three majority would aid and abet their anti-American bullshit.”
Give Margaret Attwood some credit.
Serena Joy is a complex, compelling, well-thought-out, believable persona. You’re referring to a stock Christian fascist character straight out of Central Casting.
“These are the folks I’m concerned about”
One snag there: the creatures posting this are proven cowards, bottom-dwelling, hopeless trash emboldened by the anonymity of Teh Interwebz. Fifty million heavily armed patriots threatening insurrection for nearly two decades? Hell, by this point they could have conquered Canada and Mexico and established the Fourth Reich thrice over. Assault rifles are no substitute for cojones.
It’s still possible that all this chatter may motivate some of the more deranged garbage into random acts of violence, e.g. a synagogue or mosque shooting, or ramming cars into people. But IMO that’s just another day in ‘Murica.
@ColonelMustard:
“And then you show up with some story about Rudy the Red Nosed Fascist and how none of us will let him play his Grsnd Conspiracy Theories followed by his Threats of Violence games???”
Shouldn’t we encourage grand conspiracy theories? At this point, the only way the election steal makes sense is if it was orchestrated by Republican state legislations, certified by (mostly) Republican governors, the evidence hidden and/or dismissed by Republican-packed courts and the final appeal rejected by a conservative-majority SCOTUS. Maybe it’s time for all those God-fearing, patriotic ‘Muricans to finally show the GOP that they won’t stand for being swindled.
Only the vanquished seek vengeance.
There is one problem with Trump losing the election. It means that UK is back in the lead for most fuckwitted election results. I mean back in 2016 we took a commanding position with this but then Trump was elected and we could reassure ourselves that we weren’t the stupidest bag of crack-addicted weasels on the planet. But then we double down by giving the mop haired, Eton educated, festering cockwomble an 80 seat majority. Our only hope was for orange fuck-nugget to be reelected and would could have consoled ourselves with “At least we didn’t elect that twice”. But no, you had to go and ruin it for us.
I don’t see any chance of it happening, but I’d be laughing if the Republicans did stall things so that Pelosi was President. I’ve got cousins, otherwise sane, who believe that Democrats cheated. I hope they get over it.
Folks, I just mass deleted a bunch of stuff from people who should know better. Let’s do better, folks.
@Mythago. That is a mistake I specifically did not make. Intelligent people believing that Biden won through wide spread voter fraud and somehow won all legal challenges is what scares me.
The “f*ck your feelings” crowd suddenly have a bunch of feelings.
Rene, you win the Internet for a day. Please choose an internet at the lobby.
There is a scenario that ends with president* trump – if somehow they can convince both the Senate and the House to agree that the election is hopelessly compromised and both vote to throw out the electors then a contingent election is called with the House voting for a President and the Senate voting for the vice. In that case each state gets 1 vote, regardless of how many Representatives each state has. There are 26 majority republican delegations vs 22 majority democratic ones. It’s a very far fetched scenario that would require the cooperation of the Democratic House so no worries right?
It’s literally not going to happen.
Rembrandt, I agree with you. I have friends and relatives like this too. They are kind, compassionate and intelligent, yet are sincerely convinced that there has been widespread election fraud. This does scare me as well. And there’s no way to argue or debate with them, because any source I produce to fact check their incorrect statements is derided as fake news.
Gorgeous Gary, since you brought up the Washington Football Team, I was secretly rooting for them to have a blockbuster season. (They’re just slightly on the wrong end of .500 and leading in a sickly NFC East). There are a lot of Washington fans embittered that they canceled the offensive Native mascot, and two qualities of some noxious sports fans are reactionary lunkheadedness and superstition. The Venn diagram overlap of the two would be quite large. :)
If Washington would’ve gone guns blazing this year, some of these fans might have been more accepting of the name change and would have attributed it to good superstition, that the name change caused better performance.
The Cleveland MLB team intends to retire Indians, and in the past few seasons has been playoff-caliber, to say nothing of the incredible 2016 World Series.
Ubikuberalles, post-election violence is not inevitable but it is something to be concerned about. This past weekend the Proud Boys ran through Washington DC, and its leader boasted of being invited by Trump to the White House. (A spokesman denied it was an invitation but did say the leader was on a public tour and never met the president, though considering the source it’s hard to say for sure.) There were 4 stabbed, though news reports conflict on who were the perpetrators and victims.
The PB resembles street hooliganism that is more familiar in Europe. It’s a lot of street brawling and use of crude weaponry. A lot of it is for show, as they like to announce they are coming and want to be recorded to build their street cred.
Jeff Sharlet is alerting us of a far more ominous current of “police nationalism.” He noticed that the black-white-and-blue (“back the blue”) flag is supplanting the Stars and Stripes at many Trump rallies, and it symbolizes a reaction against Black Lives Matter, it’s a civilian counterpart to the Punisher logo embraced by far-right law enforcement personnel and it’s meant to be a bloody shirt to personnel killed in the line of duty. A good summary of his is deep in the tweet thread: “Police nationalists often merge “law & order” w/ an authoritarian idea of Christianity. But in essence I think it’s a secularization of authoritarian faith, fetishization of a fixed, received “law & order” similar to fundamentalist “natural law” w/ state power replacing divine.”
You can read the Sharlet tweet thread here: https://threader.app/thread/1321843659248177154
Disaffected pro-Trump police and military personnel are far more frightening, since they have knowledge of and access to weapons and can plan and execute tactics and maneuvers. Several cities and counties are looking at laying off police personnel due to pandemic-related economic contraction or acquiescence to “Defund the police” street movements.
This is the real beast we have to fear. Enforcers of the violence monopoly who are severed from the uniformed chain of command, who lost their livelihoods, and find themselves despised in the community are a clear and present danger. Consider: the interwar Freikorps in Germany; the military and police personnel who lost their careers in the dissolution of Yugoslavia; de-Baathification in the Iraq invasion (Saddam’s loyalists became adventurers who went on to found ISIS).
There wont be a civil war. But while trump has been president, there has been a jump in the number of bigotted attacks and domestic terror. The thing to watch is whether those numbers go down at all or whether the conspiracy theories, aon, fox, and qanon keep fanning the flames.
Speaking of which, given the russia interference that mueer found, i hope biden significantly ramps up our efforts to counter tgeir efforts to destroy our democracy. While they’re at it, they should find out who is behind qanon. Bevause they are really good at misinformation. And most conspiracy theory nuts are too stupid to pull it off.
“given the russia interference that mueer found”
Mueller.
As John so aptly put it, this election is over, Biden is now the President-elect and can now all breath easier. As for me, I still like to go to white supremacists sites like RSHDs and read how Trump is somehow going to pull it off. I’m really cruel, I want to give them hope just to dash it to pieces. They deserve to have their hopes and dreams crushed, and that will happen.
@Rembrant, fair, but it’s less that otherwise intelligent people bought the election conspiracy theories as, otherwise intelligent people are in love with Trumpism, and they are too emotionally sunk to back out now (and admit they were wrong, and admit all the doublethink and stupid rationalization they engaged in, etc.). It IS scary. It’s like discovering a friend has a serious drug addiction, and having them explain to you why their drug is good for them, actually, and why it’s OK for them to smash car windows to steal things to pay for their fix, and all the information you’re giving them about why they have a problem is a lie invented by bad people.
From another timeline: Hillary Clinton lost re-election in 2020, so typical of those who followup on a two term President.
She handled the corona virus outbreak really poorly — 3,000 Americans died. It was a 9/11 in her last year. It’s worse other places, but this is America — we can and should do better. The Pandemic Task force was poorly funded. We all had to wear masks for a month.
The President-Elect is former General Mattis. He ran on a platform of ensuring every American has access to the same healthcare services as members of the Marines. That’ll guarantee such a disaster never happens again. Once the troops started getting sick, it was all over.
HRC was able to appoint two members to the court. We lost RBG just before the election, and her seat is going to be filled by Mattis. He’d pledged it’ll be someone appropriate as the heir of that seat.
Nancy Pelosi regained her gavel in 2020 — America always splits the ticket! It’s a razor-thin majority, at 225 seats. The R’s hold the Senate, of course.
One thing HRC did that, frankly, I wasn’t sure about, was the official guest worker program with Mexico. This allows citizens of Mexico to come on into the States and work, and send remittances home without fear of gangs or taxes. My concern is the pay — its below minimum wage. It’s inhuman to ask people to work for a subhuman wage.
What I did love was she expanded programs for refugees. Gang violence, fear of reprisals, all now count. We’ve got the poor, the tired, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Arizona and New Mexico tried to rebel against it, but then folks started forming small businesses. Everybody wins.
It’s worked out! We’re out producing China, and have largely continued the Obama economy.
We’re out of Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Kerry said he didn’t want to ask anyone to be the last person to die for a mistake, and started pulling troops out.
I’m a bit calmer now that the Electoral College has cast their ballots, but I won’t sleep easy again until Biden’s sworn in and is ensconced in the Oval.
I know it’s crazy, but these past four INSANE years has made it hard to believe that evil won’t ultimately prevail.