November 7, 2020
It was mid-December 2000 before we knew who’d be the first American President of the 21st Century, a good month and change after the last vote had been cast in that year’s election. That one was a tie, more or less (Gore got half a million more votes, nationally) and whoever won Florida would win the election. It was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court that vote counting should stop and up to a very gracious loser to concede for the good of the country.
Times have changed a lot since then, but here we are four days after this year’s contest still not knowing the outcome. Well, we sort of do, but we’d like somebody to come out and say it. Then the two runners can exchange dignified phone calls and come downstairs to their cheering or subdued supporters and say the nice things about our country and Democracy that we like them to say. It’s the political equivalent of an adult breaking up a fight and ordering the kids to shake hands. And it can be effective in lowering the temp after a hard fought campaign so that the country can move forward, at least superficially united. It represents a symbolic end of the conflict.
It looks like that may not happen anytime soon, what with Biden holding a slim lead in several of the remaining states, thousands of mailed in votes yet to be counted, and an increasingly unhinged President Trump carrying on like it was him with a big lead. He’s telegraphed that he intends to fight to the finish and leave everything on the field. This has led to his surrogates arguing in various courtrooms to either halt or continue counting votes in the remaining uncalled states depending, of course, on who leads.
Well, you know what they say about the waiting…
