Biden Wins the Presidency! Unless …

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[Originally published 11/6 at 11:00 a.m.]

There is now no way for Trump to win the election, OTHER THAN:

  • Arizona and Georgia (with all-red Legislatures and Governors) exerting their Twelfth Amendment power to substitute their own appointed electors for the ones chosen by the voters
  • Pennsylvania doing the same based on legislative act alone
  • Nebraska retracting Omaha’s right to cast its own electoral vote
  • Nevada’s latest votes being disqualified on some pretext
  • Wisconsin’s recount flipping its vote with the aid of its corrupt state Supreme Court.
  • faithless (including bribed) electors
  • improbably successful litigation challenging supposed fraud
  • the US Supreme Court blessing all of the above shenanigans
  • more that I forget at the moment
I’m celebrating — but guardedly.  Much mischief remains possible — all of which the Right-of-Roberts Supreme Court majority would probably allow — and we need to be putting elected officials on the spot right now to commit not to doing any of it (all of which Trump has already threatened, except the Omaha thing) or else wear a permanent brand of shame.
Oh well, time for me to call Georgia to cure rejected absentee ballots!
UPDATE, 11/7, after belatedly getting the 8:30 news a bit after 9:00 a.m.:

Each of the two major news consortia (AP and NYT) have now called Pennsylvania, meaning that Joe Biden has won the election.  Later in the hour, both called Nevada for Biden as well.  One of them, I think it’s AP, has called Arizona for Biden — and the other still hasn’t.  Former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has explained to Trump that a recount simply isn’t going to change the result in his state.  North Carolina shows a Trump lead, and Georgia shows a Biden lead, but neither has yet been called.

(In Brea, so help me God, the call of Pennsylvania for Biden was soon followed by two enormous thunderclaps, a monsoon-intensity downpour of rain, and a hailstorm.  If this was some sort of cosmic exorcism of the country, it was really well done!)

Other than the possibility of Pennsylvania’s legislature trying to retract and replace its delegates under the 12th Amendment without the support of its Governor, and getting the Supreme Court’s approval for doing so, there is no winning path left for Trump other than a massive wave of faithless electors.  If this did happen in Pennsylvania, though, it could also with a firmer constitutional basis) happen in Arizona, giving Trump the election.

But it won’t.  There’s a safeguard in Arizona that I believe will prevent it: the persisting memory of John McCain.  I love this, because without him Trump could really have a shot at making this gambit work.  Blocking off Trump’s final path to cheat his way to victory is, perhaps, McCain’s final posthumous victory over his nemesis.

My cable news devotee father reports that Biden supporters on college campuses are jumping up and down and carrying signs in celebration — but wearing masks and social distancing!  I’ve always figured that Trump was going to acknowledge the reality of Covid and start to take proper precautions right after the election, when it could no longer hurt him politically, but a little hail stone just told me that he’s now out for revenge and wants to see as many people die of it as possible.  I’ve not sure whether to believe a cranberry sized piece of atmospheric ice, but I think that Pence and the Cabinet ought to invoke the 25th Amendment anyway just to be safe — and give Trump a nice head start on packing for his trip to Russia.

I was about to invoke that journalistic bromide that “now the hard part begins …” — but I don’t think it’s true.  Dislodging the malignant tumor from the body politic was the hard part.  Saving the world will seem easy by comparison.  Or at least that how it seems at this moment.


About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)