Thursday, November 12, 2020

The Big Sulk

 President-elect Joe Biden's lead is now at 5.2 million. 

Arizona's Republican AG says there is now no chance that Trump can close Biden's 12-thousand vote lead in that state. He has also said there has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

His Republican counterpart in Georgia, where they are going to a hand-recount, and where Biden leads by about 14-thousand votes, says much the same thing. Recounts, by the way, seldom result in more than a very marginal adjustment in vote-totals. The largest ever recount adjustment amounted to just 1,100 votes.

Karl Rove, no friend of the Democrats, wrote a piece for the WSJ saying there was no evidence of widespread fraud and that the president ought to cooperate now with the transition process.

Robert Jeffress, Texas mega-pastor and Trump ally, admits that it's clear that Biden has won. 

In the meantime, Donald sulks in the White House. He tweets that the pre-election polls were wrong on purpose and at least one, he said, was probably illegal. An illegal poll. You can't make this stuff up.

But strangely, though he runs the Justice Department, no "illegal-poll charges" have been brought, probably because there is no law against polling. The charge is, how shall we say this, stupid-nuts.

Most Republicans are, however, defending Trump's unusual behavior or at least remaining silent about it. 

My own Trump-supporting friends are passing on videos from known Fake News sources like Gateway Pundit that allege widespread fraud or even election-rigging. They say Trump won the election and even insist he will remain in office. They seem to have an allergic reaction to facts, or to have adopted vision-conscripting blinders so they can see only what suits them and filter out the challenging and inconvenient. It's as if they are suffering from some sort of mass psychosis, and I honestly fear what will happen when all the legal battles fall through and the elections are upheld in the courts.

Most of these friends are professing Christians of the Charismatic variety. They have a tendency to go all in on prophecies that suit their political pre-sets. These "prophets" (yes, those are scare-quotes) have said for years that Trump is God's man and will win re-election to continue God's work. These Charismatic Trump-followers have seen this election from the start not as a political event but as a kind of end-times mega-battle between good and evil. 

Such a battle will never be lost by the forces of God (so they style themselves). The election was not merely an exercise in democracy, it is God vs. Satan. [Yes, they are this crazy.]

And so we move on. 

* * *

See also:

President Trump's Last Hissy Fit, by S. E. Cupp


No comments: