Joe Biden's lead in the national vote-count is now 5.3 million. Arizona is now blue on the NYTimes Interactive map, giving Biden at least 290 Electoral College votes. This means that even in the highly unlikely event that the lawsuits in Pennsylvania, say, were successful in reversing the results in that state, Trump would still need to pull off the same trick in 2 other states as well in order to shift the Electoral College to his favor.
North Carolina remains, inexplicably, undeclared (it's a clear winner for Trump) and Georgia, where Biden has a 14-thousand vote lead, is in the midst of a hand recount.
But many millions of others believe the election has been stolen. They assume the allegations of the Trump team are all true, and it was Donald who won this election. The Balkanization of this nation continues apace.
This is a situation quite unlike anything we have experienced. It's a good bet that a sizable majority of our country do not believe in the validity of this election (even despite Trump's own Department of Homeland Security calling it the most secure election in history).
It is in Trump's interests to maintain this culture of grievance. In fact, to understand the genius of Trump, one must understand that he is a master of grievance-maintenance within a significant American subculture.
The idea of a culture of grievance or of victimhood has long been a critique that the Right has launched against the Left, but it was Trump's special sauce to nurse into being his own special brand of grievance culture, making the election one that pits differing claims to victimhood against one another.
This issue is wrapped up with race and class issues, of course, and it is wrapped up also with Trump's tactic of gaslighting.
When the Democratic Party had the sole proprietorship of grievance culture in America, I was not a fan. When the Republicans under Trump became simply a competing brand of the same, well, it doubled my ire. We are seeing the result now. Trump-world is nothing but grievance, mostly bogus, all the way down. Grievance-culture requires constant feeding, and Trump is willing and eager to sustain it forever, because without it his brand completely collapses.
This is why something like Sharpiegate could cause these people to take to the streets in protest. It was a complete hoax, but it was created for the one and only purpose of feeding and sustaining Trump-worlds sense of grievance.
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