Trump-out#

Following the 2000 U.S. Presidential election I kept, and still keep, all of the newspapers till the Supreme Court ruled that George W. Bush had been elected President.  This was Dec. 12, 2000.  Al Gore, out-going Vice President graciously conceded, and on Jan. 6, 2001, Gore himself presided at the U.S. Senate when the Bush win was made official.

In 2000, Bush won the electoral college 271-266.  Gore won the popular vote 50,999,897 to 50,456,002.  One other candidate, Ralph Nader, polled over a million votes: 2,882, 955.  Here is the data.

In 2020, Joe Biden had over 81,000,000 votes for President; Donald Trump over 74,000,000.  There has been no concession by Trump; no graciousness whatsoever. Over 50 times (the exact numbers change) courts have affirmed the validity of the elections where there were legal challenges; all states have accepted their election results, but not Donald Trump, and Vice-President Mike Pence will have an interesting day on January 6, 2021. All of the results are easily available.  It appears that disrupt and confuse will be the order of the day through the inauguration January 20, and doubtless on into the Biden presidency.  No one will benefit, certainly not we citizens.

The above is the story of two countries 2020 ends: the U.S. in 2000 and the U.S. in 2020.

In 21 days Donald Trump will be history.  Three weeks is an instant in history; but a long time.  Lots can happen, but there will be an end.

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This blog is a public place.  This is the 1,633rd post since I began posting here in March, 2009.

Best I can tell, “Trump” appears substantively in 79 blog posts; the first August 1, 2011, when someone sent me one of those ubiquitous forwards where Trump was railing on against “Obamacare”.  The next mentioning Trump appeared in 2016.

I wrote the posts, and I really thought that Trump ran only for his own vanity.  He had no experience in governing, other than running his own business; he was a TV personality in “The Apprentice”, a show which I have never watched.

I’ve watched politics for many years, and since the days of Newt Gingrich (1978 was when he burst on the national scene) and even before, the successful Republican tactic has been attack-attack-attack, the nastier the better.  Achieving and retaining Power was all that mattered.  What is happening this year is nothing new for them.

(Hillary Clinton was probably the most qualified candidate for President in modern history.  She only appeared 20 times in my blogs in the same period as Trump, the first April 16, 2015.)

In the run-up to the 2016 election I wasn’t aware of Trumps prodigious production of flat-out lies about anything and everything.

I think the worst part of experiencing the Trump years was the sense that I and others who share my political philosophy were completely excluded from partnership in the United States.  This was manifested in many ways from the mouth of Trump himself, his rallies with his true believers.  This is the only such time period in my adult life, including when Republicans were President (for more years than Democrats).  There was no respect for we losers 2017 to present.  Trumps supporters by their acquiescence supported this exclusion, making people like me second class citizens.  Win-Lose is always an ultimately Lose-Lose philosophy – a never-ending cycle of losers seeking payback….

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I’m publishing this on Dec. 31, 2020.  My intention is to keep succeeding posts Trump-free.

On New Years Day my recommendation to the 81,000,000 who agree with me is that Joe Biden will do a great job under awful circumstances he will inherit.

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#  in the headline:   I recently was re-listening to audio tapes I made during a January 1996 trip to Israel.  On our first morning in Tel Aviv the tour guide was going over the usual ‘rules for the road’ for we 73 tourists, and noted that Israel’s climate is dry, and that we should be careful to keep well hydrated.  At the same time, as we all know, things like coffee have other effects, so we were advised to use the frequent opportunities to “coffee-out”.  It got a good laugh.

POSTNOTES:  The disastrous Trump era will be news for years.  Among many incongruities I saw:

1.  I think the very worst consequence of Trump-“style” was to exploit the need, unfortunately shared by virtually all candidates for U.S. President in our history, to go to war, or at least threaten such action as almost a political necessity.  Trump chose as his “enemy”, people like myself, Democrats.  Of course, setting one group in society against another weakens the whole.  No matter: war sells.  We almost demand it.
2. Leveraging fear and resentment are very useful tools of manipulators.  Thus the division of our society into “tribes”, one of which includes me; the others who tend to think of people like me as ‘socialists’ or worse.
3. The alliance of “Christians” with an amoral serial liar is disconcerting.  In my opinion, this was primarily a lust for power vy so-called Christian leaders through hoped for control of judges and those who make the laws to be judged.  I’d recommend the Netflix series entitled “The Family” about the group that is responsible for the annual Presidents Prayer Breakfast.
4. The similarly odd alliance of “populists” with American Oligarchs from among the super-rich.   The populists were easily manipulated by promises; Oligarch’s had the money to manipulate, but are stupid: the glorious American economy depends on people with money to spend on assorted goods…still the desire of many of the super-rich seems to be to squeeze the poor (everyone below the one percent) economically.  Increasing poverty does not bring prosperity, except for the few….
5. The replacement of demonstrable facts and science by assorted story-telling and out and out fantasies like made up stories, Q-anon and the like are very dangerous to society at large.

The future is up to us, in the New Year.