Category: Democrats 2020

Saturday Soother – December 12, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Cathedral Spires, Black Hills SD – 2020 photo by Max Foster

We’re stumbling into another December weekend without a bailout package for those who are still unemployed in the pandemic. The WaPo’s headline says it all: “More Americans are shoplifting food as aid runs out during the pandemic.” This is caused at least in part, by people going without jobs or unemployment insurance while waiting for the Senate and Mitch McConnell to come up with a bill that provides Americans the aid they need.

But the biggest news of the week was that the Supreme Court declined to hear the case brought by Texas asking the Court to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and declare Trump to be the winner. The Supreme Court wrote:

“The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot,”

In case you’re wondering, Trump’s three new appointments didn’t support hearing the case. Whoever talked Trump out of appointing his kids, Eric, Ivanka and Junior to the Court had better lay low for the next few days. The Supreme Court deserves credit for rejecting an attempt to destroy American democracy, but many of those Republicans who joined the lawsuit, deserve our harshest judgment.

Adam Sewer of The Atlantic tweeted:

People have argued that because Trump hasn’t overturned an election, that we can now relax: The “system worked”, there were no tanks in the streets. But Republicans chose sides this week. More than half (126) of the Republicans in the House of Representatives signed onto Texas’s failed lawsuit, along with 17 Republican attorneys-general. Republicans must own up to their anti-democratic actions.

Once this is over, and Trump is living in Florida and is acting as president-in-exile, we’ll need to hold all of his seditious minions accountable. Unsurprisingly, this failed lawsuit came from the Party that claims to oppose “judicial activism.”

But enough of all of this big news, Wrongo was attracted to an Ars Technica story that reported on researchers teaching lab rats to drive little electric cars. The research was aimed at learning what effect the environment a rat was raised in had on its ability to learn new tasks. The team, led by Richmond University professor Kelly Lambert, decided to teach them to drive not just navigate another maze.

But if you’re going to teach rats to drive, first you need to build them a car (an ROV or, Rat Operated Vehicle). The chassis and powertrain came from a robot car kit, and a transparent plastic food container provided the body:

The controls were three copper wires stretched across an opening cut out of the front, with an aluminum plate on the floor. When a rat stood on the plate and gripped a copper bar, a circuit was completed, and the motors engaged: one bar made the car turn to the left, one made it turn to the right, and the third made it go straight ahead. Sounds hard, but it didn’t take long for the rats to learn how to drive. Their goal was to drive the car to a food treat.

The rats had three five-minute training sessions a week for eight weeks, and they learned to drive!

The placement of the treat and the starting position and orientation of the car varied, so the rats had a different challenge each time. At the end of the experiment, each rat went through a series of trials, conducted a few days apart, where they were allowed to drive around the arena. One experiment had them driving without food treats, to see if they were only doing driving to get food.

Some who were quicker to start driving continued to be more interested in driving, even when there was no reward beyond the feel of moving without using their feet.

Uber is excited by this news and may try to replace human drivers. It’s their Holy Grail: drivers that do it for the love of driving and don’t ask for pay, benefits, or even treats.

On to the weekend! We’re finishing up the Christmas decorations in the Mansion of Wrong, although there will be very few visitors this time. So grab an ornament, and listen to the Dave Brubeck Quartet play “Take Five” from their 1959 ground-breaking album, “Time Out”. The tune was written by Paul Desmond, here on alto saxophone, Brubeck on piano, Teo Macero, drums and Eugene Wright on bass. Have a martini on the house:

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Trump’s Real Plan is Working

The Daily Escape:

Snow in the Bigelow Preserve, Stratton, ME – December 2020 photo by CaptainScrummy

So you think that America will cruise in to the acceptance of the Electoral College vote by a Joint Session of Congress on January 6, and Trump and the millions of members in his Lost Cause will just fade away? Think again:

The past four years have been a train wreck, and Trump has been the conductor.

In one way, Trump’s attempted soft coup is failing. After all, his hand-packed Supreme Court wouldn’t hear the case designed to overturn Pennsylvania’s election win for Biden. Yet, as the tweet above shows, Trump’s continuing effort to poison our voting process may yet lead to some terrible things.

But, is PA Sen Ward telling us the truth? Does she really fear Republican partisans? Or, is this an ex-post excuse for doing what they all wanted to do anyway? WaPo’s Greg Sergeant makes a good point:

“What matters is that many of them (Republicans) are entirely willing to support specific concrete actions to steal the election on Trump’s behalf.”

Aaron Blake notes that state GOP officials so far have overwhelmingly sided against Trump’s voter fraud claims, when they are forced to decide. But as we showed on Monday, Republicans are keeping their powder dry waiting for the House and Senate meetings to accept the Electoral College votes: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…just as notable as the lack of Republicans willing to say Biden is the president-elect is the lack of buy-in on Trump’s claims from other Republicans. They…have a choice to make if their colleagues press the issue, [by arguing against acceptance of the Electoral College vote at the January 6 joint session of Congress]”

Jonathan Last makes it clear what’s going on:

“Everyone laughs at how stupid the Trump lawsuits are. Can you believe these morons? They lose everywhere! Even Republican judges keep slapping them down! How embarrassing for Trump!

But that’s the wrong way to think about Trump’s actions since November 3. Because his goal hasn’t been to keep the office of the president. It’s been to keep the Republican Party.”

More:

“On the morning of November 4, Donald Trump faced two problems. The first was that he was going to lose the power of the presidency. The second was that this loss endangered his ownership of the GOP.”

Last says that for Trump, the lawsuits, the posturing, the attempted coup— all would still be nice if he were to be re-inaugurated January 21. But that’s a secondary objective. The primary objective was to stop the Republican Party from leaving him:

“…owning a major political party isn’t as useful as being president. But it’s not nothing….In a two-party system, you can exert a great deal of power by being the head of a Party. You have businesses and foreign governments that will pay tribute to you. You have an audience of something like 40 million partisans who can be mined for contributions and mobilized as a flash mob whenever you need them.”

Unfortunately, these millions out in TrumpWorld don’t know they’re being conned. They still actually believe that Trump will win reelection.  That’s dangerous, because many of them will be shocked when reality hits. What is most worrisome is the possibility of something happening that makes them feel they have license for mass violence. We can try to minimize the threat posed by Republican passivity, but there are always lone wolves who will try to do horrible things.

Can the Republican Party move on from Trump? It could, but that requires the next generation of ambitious presidential aspirants to replace Trump in the daily political discussion. But Trump won 74 million votes, more than any other Republican, just last month. And the base’s acceptance of Trump’s claim that he really won preempts the plans of the next generation.

The other Republican presidential aspirants have realized that the best path forward is to say they believe the voter fraud line. That means their incentive is to outbid their peers in expressing support for Trump’s claims of victory. Let’s leave it to Jonathan Last to close:

“….the minimum ante for Republican politics is now support for an insane conspiracy theory.”

Unlike his predecessors, Trump has not called Biden, much less invited him to the White House. Trump has indicated that he may not attend Biden’s inauguration, which would make him the first sitting president since Andrew Johnson in 1869 to refuse to participate in the most important ritual of the America’s democratic transfer of power.

Our democracy is on a knife edge right now. Even if we’re certain that Biden will prevail, the kowtowing to Trump by Republicans isn’t going to end soon, or well.

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Monday Wake Up Call – December 7, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Crater Lake, OR – November 2020 photo via imagur. This is the fifth time we’ve featured Crater Lake.

What’s it gonna take for America to wake up to the Republican’s ongoing attempted coup? From the WaPo:

“Just 27 congressional Republicans acknowledge Joe Biden’s win over President Trump a month after the former vice president’s clear victory of more than 7 million votes nationally and a convincing electoral-vote margin that exactly matched Trump’s 2016 tally.”

A team of 25 Post reporters contacted aides for every Republican by email and phone asking three questions: 1) Who won the presidential contest? 2) Do you support or oppose Trump’s continuing efforts to claim victory? 3) If Biden wins a majority in the Electoral College, will you accept him as the legitimately elected president? Most refused to answer. Here are the WaPo’s findings in a chart:

When 215 of the 249 Republicans in Congress (86%) refuse to answer whether Biden would be the legitimately elected president, we’re looking at an attempted coup. These people aren’t waiting to get all the facts, or let the process play out. We shouldn’t be calling it anything else.

Just three state elections were really close — that is, decided by less than a one percent margin: Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. Biden won all of them. The only semi-close state that Trump won was North Carolina, by a 1.3% margin. But had the three really close states gone for Trump, we would be looking at an Electoral College (EC) tie, 269-269. Then the House would re-elect Trump, thanks to the Constitutional process for breaking Electoral College ties, which gives each state one vote in the House to determine the next president.

Republicans control a majority of the seats in 26 House delegations, Democrats control 22, with two split evenly. That would mean a Trump re-election. It’s important to again emphasize that the EC would then have overturned the clear will of the people, showing how terribly flawed the EC truly is.

Since Republicans are still unwilling to say Biden won, even though all three of those states have certified him as the winner, imagine what we would be going through today if a single state hung in the balance?

And if the election had come down to a margin of a few thousand votes in Pennsylvania, you better believe the Supreme Court would have happily voted to toss out enough votes to provide a Republican victory. We shouldn’t feel sanguine about Biden’s clear victory.

We saw this in Wisconsin. Their Supreme Court just had a couple of 4-3 decisions on ridiculous cases brought by Trump, cases that argued for decisions that would be contrary to their constitution. Three of the four Republican judges voted with Trump anyway. Fortunately, one Republican judge actually cared a little about the law. That’s just too close.

And Politico is reporting that Rep. Mo Brooks, (R-AL) plans to challenge the Electoral College votes when Congress moves to certify Joe Biden’s victory on January 6. He’s looking for a Senator to join his challenge, though he noted that doing so would largely be a symbolic, and not practical, undertaking.

Time to wake up America! Our democracy is hanging by a thread. Despite Biden receiving more votes than any other president, despite getting the largest vote percentage against an opponent since 1932 (when Roosevelt defeated Hoover), Trump is still trying to overturn the election. And most Republicans are silent or looking the other way, hoping Trump succeeds.

To help you wake up, listen to Elvin Bishop and Charlie Musselwhite perform “What the Hell” which they released in August. You get Charlie’s harmonica and Elvin’s guitar. It’s a protest song for our times:

Here are their great lyrics:

Look at the shape, the shape the Nation’s in
This situation is a shame and a sin
I want to know, how could a good thing go so wrong?
Tell me, what the hell is going on?

Sometimes I don’t know whether to cry or laugh
Half the people in this country can’t stand the other half
I want to know, why can’t we halfway get along?
People, people, what the hell is going on?

He is the president but wants to be the king
Know what I like about the guy? Not a goddamn thing
I want to know, how can four years seem so long?
Lord have mercy, what the hell is going on?

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 6, 2020

It is such a contrast listening to Biden speak compared to Trump. On the one hand, it’s a relief. On the other hand, sometimes Biden sounds both naive and optimistic, after the last four years.

Can we ever go back?

The WSJ points out that in the Coronavirus recession, many out-of-work people are turning to GoFundMe pages in order to live:

“…more than $100 million for basic living expenses in tens of thousands of fundraisers on GoFundMe so far this year, the company said. That is up 150% from 2019 and more than any previous year. Last month, the company introduced a new category of fundraiser, for rent, food and monthly bills.”

This is happening as the Congress still diddles with a new stimulus package for Americans. A recent TransUnion survey showed that more than half of US consumers said the pandemic affected them financially. Some 38% said they couldn’t pay their credit-card bills and 30% said they couldn’t pay for their internet. On to cartoons.

House Republicans moved on Thursday to adjourn without voting for the stimulus:

Help is needed everywhere:

When you realize that it could be worse than you thought:

Elephant magically reverts to old ways:

Reality sets in:

The anti-vaxx’ers peculiar rationale:

Everyone’s singing the same song for Christmas:

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Saturday Soother – December 5, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Trump barn, Ohio –  photo by Dan Keck via

The Democrats are soul-searching about why they can’t win the US rural vote. Many believe the Democrats underperformed in fly-over America, and they’re asking (again) if rural America is lost to them forever.

According to the Economic Innovation Group, the rural Midwest counties Biden won had population growth that averaged 1.8% over the past 10 years, while counties Trump won saw an average population decline of 2.5%:

“…16 rural counties flipped from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020…12 flipped from Clinton in 2016 to Trump in 2020.”

So, not much change. Over the past 50 years, the Midwest has seen out-migration, economic stagnation, young people leaving and small towns withering. They turned rightward and have largely stayed there. Is rural America worth fighting for?

Estimates of rural populations across the US suggest roughly 20% of Americans live in them. Rural areas are not exclusive to states that gave all their electors to Trump. New York and California have plenty of rural spaces and voters. Wrongo’s county in Democratic Connecticut is largely rural, and voted for Trump in 2016 and by a lower margin in 2020.

Yet, given the Electoral College, it is difficult to fashion a durable political majority if Democrats write off most of exurban and rural America. Let’s briefly look at Iowa and Wisconsin.

In Iowa, Trump won the state by 8.3 percentage points this year. GW Bush won in 2004 by 0.7 percentage points. He was the first GOP presidential candidate to carry Iowa in 20 years. Obama won with 54% in 2008 and 52% in 2012. Trump won with 51.7% in 2016, and with 53% in 2020.

Trump carried 93 rural counties, while Biden carried all six of Iowa’s urban counties. Republicans now represent all or parts of 97 of Iowa’s 99 counties.

Wisconsin flipped to blue by six-tenths of a percentage point. Biden won in 14 counties. From Martin Longman at Progress Pond:

“Wisconsin’s Dunn County is in the central part of the state, over 96% white, and represented by Democrat Ron Kind in Congress. Not far from Eau Claire, the rural area voted for Barack Obama twice, but in 2016 Donald Trump won it with 52% to 41%, a 2,000-vote advantage over Hillary Clinton. In 2020, running against Joe Biden, Trump carried Dunn County 56-42, giving him a 3,300-vote edge.”

Bill Hogseth, the chair of the county’s Democratic Party, wrote a piece for Politico Magazine, explaining that the national Democratic Party doesn’t take rural issues seriously enough to get support from rural Wisconsinites. From Hogseth:

“For Democrats to start telling a story that resonates, they need to show a willingness to fight for rural people, and not just by proposing a “rural plan” or showing up on a farm for a photo op
A big step forward for Democrats would be to champion antitrust enforcement and challenge the anticompetitive practices of the gigantic agribusiness firms that squeeze our communities. In his rural plan, Biden pledged to “strengthen antitrust enforcement,” but the term doesn’t appear until the 35th bullet point. For rural voters, antitrust enforcement is a top priority…”

Hogseth is talking about Democratic neglect. Elizabeth Warren made anti-trust and the breakup of big companies’ part of her primary campaign. That’s good policy, and if it helps win some rural votes, even better.

Republicans aren’t talking about anti-monopoly anywhere in America. A generous Farm Bill channeled money into rural areas and the Trump administration’s trade relief payments to farmers have helped maintain rural Republican support. Hogseth says Democratic neglect leaves:

“…an opening for other stories to be told to fill the vacuum—stories that villainize and divide us along racial, geographic and partisan lines.”

People don’t make decisions based solely on a rational analysis, or on self-interest. They don’t believe in the Democrats’ promises to improve things, because Dems haven’t delivered on them in the past 40 years. They need a villain to blame. Trump, and the GOP (and every other nationalist movement in history) gives them just that.

The center-left should be rejoicing, but their down-ballot results are a cause for concern. Today, Democrats are fighting about whether they should be more progressive, or remain moderate going forward.

One reason that Trump got 74+ million votes was because Democrats never mobilized the working class against him. Instead, they mobilized to win suburbia. That gave Biden the presidency, but it also keeps our enduring governmental gridlock in place.

Time to relax a bit on this December Saturday. Today, Connecticut is waiting on a snow storm that in typical nor’easter fashion, could dump 10+ inches, or miss us entirely.

Still, we have time to take a few minutes, turn away from our email, and listen to Harpist Silke Aichhorn play Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers” from his Nutcracker Suite. It was written as a ballet in 1892, and has been enjoyed around the holidays ever since:

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Will Congress Act on Funding Before Christmas?

The Daily Escape:

Turkey Pond, near Concord, NH – November 2020 photo by panasthropodism

The last time Congress passed a COVID relief bill was over seven months ago. This week, a bipartisan group of Senators revealed a new $908 billion stimulus proposal. This reflects a substantial cave-in by Democrats and House Speaker Pelosi, (D-CA) whose last offer was about $2.2 trillion.

Whether it goes forward depends on Pelosi and Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) finding agreement, and then getting Trump to sign off. Pelosi and McConnell talked on Thursday about how to find common ground on both a funding bill to keep the government’s doors open, and on another coronavirus relief package. Needless to say, they are still far apart.

Jeff Stein of WaPo tweeted about how different this Covid proposal is from the last two circulated by Mitch McConnell: (brackets by Wrongo)

Sept. 8: McConnell releases plan including $300/week in supplemental federal UI [unemployment insurance] for jobless Americans

Dec. 1: McConnell releases plan including $0/week in supplemental federal UI for jobless Americans https://t.co/GywLXGzOP9

According to the Century Foundation, 12 million people could see their Covid-related aid disappear the day after Christmas. This cliff is a major factor in pressuring Congress to pass a new bill before their 2020 recess. This funding need is separate from the need to fund the government past December 11. James Kwak of the Baseline Scenario says:

“One of Congress’s top priorities this week and next is to pass some kind of funding bill that will keep the federal government operating past December 11.”

Kwak points out that there are two ways this could happen: First, Congress could pass a continuing resolution that maintains funding at current levels for a period of time, until after Biden is inaugurated, and a new Congress is seated.

Second, the Parties could agree to pass an omnibus fiscal year 2021 spending bill that funds the government through the end of the current fiscal year on September 30, 2021. This is Trump’s preference.

This is a bit of inside baseball. Government funding measures are must-pass bills. No politician wants a government shutdown. Democrats have historically been able to pin most of the blame for a shutdown on Republicans, starting in 1995, when Bill Clinton successfully portrayed Newt Gingrich as a zealot who wanted to slash Medicare.

OTOH, an omnibus budget reconciliation bill could represent one of the Biden administration’s few real chances to pass anything big through Congress. This is true since bills passed via the reconciliation process are not subject to the Senate’s filibuster.

Biden probably doesn’t want to cede the omnibus bill win to Trump just as Trump is packing his bags.

But, if Dems linked the short-term funding bill to an omnibus budget reconciliation bill, they’d only need a bare majority of Senators to pass both. The gamble would be that in order to avert a government shutdown, a scant few Republican moderates might be pressured to join in an omnibus budget deal.

Part of the Dem’s reasoning for wanting to take only a short-term government funding deal is a bet that Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock can both win in Georgia on January 5. Then, the Senate would be split 50/50, with VP Harris, as President of the Senate, in a position to cast the deciding vote(s) on the Democrat’s agenda.

If both Georgia candidates win, Democrats will control both Houses of Congress for the first time since 2010, but by a razor-thin margin. They would need to insure that the one Senate Democrat in name only, Joe Manchin (D-WVA) would agree with whatever bills they put forward. Manchin will be in a position to control much of the Democrats’ political agenda.

We’ll see how all of this plays out in real-time, since the Senate is planning to head for home on December 18. Kwak says:

“…Democratic leadership in Congress seems inclined to give up the potential chance to write their own appropriations bill in January in exchange for a bill that they have to negotiate with McConnell and…Donald J. Trump.”

Congress might pass something that is an extension of the CARES Act, stranger things have happened. It’s likely it will pass a government funding extension before leaving for the holidays.

For the CARES extension, it appears that Democrats will have to cave in to McConnell on the corporate liability shield he’s looking for as the price of a relief bill.

It’s doubtful that Dems can go home without having passed something for Covid relief and some way to fund the government until at least late January.

The challenge of limited time and limited trust will test a divided Congress’s ability to make a few deals after months of gridlock.

Good luck America.

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Trump’s End Game

The Daily Escape:

”The Gates” by Christo, Central Park, NYC – 2005. A series of 7,503 vinyl “gates” were installed along 23 miles of Central Park pathways. The exhibit ran for 15 days, from February 12, 2005 through February 27, 2005. Wrongo and Ms.Right saw it on February 13th 2005.

From the AP:

“Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday the Justice Department has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.”

Nothing Barr says makes any difference to the Trump true believers. Many Trump supporters have been calling for investigations by the FBI and Justice Department, but the Justice Department won’t be going there.

It makes no difference to the lawyers trying to make a buck on Trump’s quasi-legal actions. And there is quite a troop of legal monkeys like Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, Lin Wood and Joe DiGenova. And some are spewing hate messages while reinforcing the Trump message of voter fraud. Here are two:

Lin Wood is a Georgia-based attorney best known for representing the wrongly accused bomber, Richard Jewell. He also apparently represents Donald Trump.

Joseph DiGenova, who is still helping Giuliani in challenging the 2020 presidential election results said this on a radio show about Chris Krebs, the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who was fired by Trump after saying America held its “most secure election”:

“Anybody who thinks the election went well, like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity. That guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.”

Wrongo is an advocate of free speech, but these people are fomenting assassination and a civil war, and should be stopped. Chris Krebs apparently is suing DiGenova.

But for Trump, the effort to destroy democracy is profitable. By pretending he didn’t lose, and has some legal avenues to remain in power, Trump gets to use the money he raises on pretty much whatever he wants. According to the NYT, so far, Trump has raised $170 million. The WaPo describes the funds-raising as using “a blizzard of misleading appeals about the election”. And Kurt Andersen tweets that:

“Donors on Mr. Trump’s website are opted in with a prechecked box to make monthly contributions.”

But as of Monday, all of the key swing states that Trump has been contesting — Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada — all certified Biden’s victory.

In other words, the 2020 election is over. Again.

But there also seems to be time for some hot elephant on elephant action: Republicans in Ohio have decided to try and impeach their Republican governor, Mike DeWine over his effort to contain the spread of Covid. DeWine imposed a three-week curfew from 10 pm to 5 am, and his fellow Republicans are outraged.

On Monday, Arizona’s Republican governor Ducey held a short ceremony to certify Joe Biden’s election win. He also certified the election of Democrat Mark Kelly to the US Senate. During the ceremony, Trump called on Ducey’s mobile phone, but he didn’t pick it up; he kept speaking. Trump did not take that well. He called into an Arizona election hearing Rudy Giuliani was holding, and said to the audience:

“Arizona will not forget what Ducey just did…”

You see, for Republicans, freedom isn’t free. My freedom costs yours. Democrats and other Leftists would be able to understand this, if only they loved America and freedom like Republicans do.

Republicans have been pushing extreme conspiracy theories at least since the 1950s with McCarthy and the John Birch Society. These are the same people whose fathers had “Jane Fonda Traitor Bitch” bumper stickers in the 80s and accused every liberal of being a communist. It’s natural enough that after 70 years, they really believe them. The Trumpers do not understand how a candidate who could fill arenas could lose to a candidate who barely left home.

So what’s Trump’s end game? Money in the bank can fund a presidency-in-exile. A significant portion of his dedicated followers certainly plan to stay engaged. There’s even some evidence that he may try to torpedo the Georgia Senate races. A recent poll showed that 54% of Republicans want Trump to run again in 2024.

OTOH, if that poll is correct, millions of Trump voters are done with him. Maybe he runs. But it may be that the rest of the GOP are ready to turn to one of the younger, more promising Republican creeps in the Senate.

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Hello Darkness My Old Friend

The Daily Escape:

Yachats, OR – November 2020 photo by Roberta Johnson

Did you realize that the Republicans have made it a long-term strategy to delegitimize the last four Democratic presidents? That includes Carter, Clinton, Obama and now, Biden.

What tactics the GOP will use against Biden probably haven’t been fully fleshed out yet, but it’s still seven days until the Electoral College’s “Safe Harbor” date; 13 days until Electoral College votes are cast; and 50 days until Joe Biden is inaugurated.

There’s plenty of time for their plan to come together, but you can be sure that it will be dĂ©jĂ  vu all over again. What we already know is that many Republicans are already coming out of the woodwork to criticize Biden or his nominees to various key positions. From the WaPo:

“In near-identical tweets this week, GOP senators Tom Cotton (AK), Josh Hawley (MO) and Marco Rubio (FL) all came out pretty aggressively against Biden’s Cabinet picks.”

The common thread of their tweets is a resistance to the educated, steeped-in-government expertise that Biden wants to shape his government with. Imagine the anti-elitists making that argument: Cotton graduated from Harvard undergraduate, and Harvard Law. Hawley graduated from Stanford, and Yale Law School. All three Senators voted for Trump’s Cabinet, which was filled with people who also went to Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League schools. Trump also bragged about going to an Ivy League school.

Even Larry Hogan, Republican governor of Maryland, who told Trump to concede, saw fit on Monday to endorse the two Georgia Republican Senate candidates, Loeffler and Perdue. So even the better ones aren’t changing their spots.

And we still have the twin Republican stains on the country: Eleven months into the Covid mess, sourcing sufficient testing is still a struggle, and we’re still short on PPE. As Robert Reich said:

“Leave it to Trump and his Republican allies to spend more energy fighting non-existent voter fraud than containing a virus that has killed 244,000 Americans and counting.”

The cost of the Republicans’ misplaced attention is clear: While Covid-19 surges to record levels, there’s still no national strategy for sourcing PPE or tests. There’s no national standard for stay-at-home orders, or mask mandates. There’s no funding for additional Covid relief.

Instead, the Republicans have led millions of Trump voters to believe the election was stolen. They will be a hostile force for years, supporting Trump’s presidency-in-exile at least until the 2024 elections. Delegitimizing Biden will pull lots of money into Trump’s newly formed PAC. It also allows Trump to keep himself at the center of media attention.

One thing this delegitimizing of Biden will do is keep the political gridlock going for another four years.

That will continue to enable the 40-year old Republican heist. According to a recent Rand study, if America’s distribution of income had remained the same as it was in the three decades after WWII, the bottom 90% of Americans would now be $47 trillion richer. More from Reich:

“The upward redistribution of $47tn wasn’t due to natural forces. It was contrived. As wealth accumulated at the top, so did political power to siphon off even more wealth and shaft everyone else.”

Today, we live in the richest third world country on the planet. Since Covid hit, the rich got richer. The Treasury and the Fed bailed out big corporations but let small businesses go under. Since March, billionaire wealth has soared while most of America has become poorer.

By the end of this pandemic, Trump’s legacy will have entered Pol Pot territory. He’s been ever-present, even while being a terrible president. There were no checks or balances. The GOP gave him everything he wanted, up to and including a theocratic SCOTUS.

Now we need to make sure we’ll never have another authoritarian President. We’ll do that by cleaning out the political rot. It will be hard work, it means that we need to be citizens, not merely consumers. With the Conservatives trying to combine Church and State with big business, what must be done will be hugely difficult to accomplish.

Ruminate on the return of the darkness by listening to Disturbed’s cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence”. Perhaps the best cover song ever:

Listen carefully to the words, and you will understand the story of the decline of our values and our country.

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Thanksgiving Day – November 26, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Some of us are thankful that the election is behind us. We’re all thankful that 2020 is almost over, that a vaccine is on the way, and that the Dow is up. We’re thankful that democracy has survived to fight another day. It has been a trying year.

Wrongo is thankful to all who read the Wrongologist. We’ve been at this same pop stand since 2011, and some of you have been with us the entire time. Special thanks to long haulers Monty B, Fred VK, David P, Pat M, and Terry Mck, among others.

Here are two facts about the 2020 presidential race that may have been overlooked: Dominating on social media was supposed to be all-important to winning the presidency this year. But Donald Trump has 15 million fewer votes than Twitter followers. While Joe Biden has 60 million more votes than Twitter followers.

Another crucial thing: The election of Democratic governors, lieutenant governors, attorneys-general and secretaries of state in 2018 in PA, MI and WI had a huge impact in deciding the 2020 election. They helped people vote, they fought frivolous lawsuits, and made sure that votes were counted and certified.

This is another reason why voting in state and local races is so important.

This Thanksgiving may not have as many people around the dinner table as usual. But it isn’t the first time our Thanksgiving is shrouded in tragedy. When old people like Wrongo sat down to a peaceful Thanksgiving dinner in November, 1963, we were mourning the death of JFK. Twenty years before that, Wrongo’s parents were celebrating while a continent apart, while my mother was pregnant with me, during WWII.

We are truly thankful to those who came before us, and to our family members and friends who we can’t be with today.

We’re thankful to those who are today on the front lines in the military service, or at home in our hospitals, schools, firehouses, and police stations.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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2020 Election Shows Our Economic Divide Worse Than Our Political Divide

The Daily Escape:

Faery Falls near Mt. Shasta CA – November 2020 photo by Gary German

(There will be zero to light posting for the rest of the week. We all need a break from the Turkey of an administration that we’ve endured for the past four years, and this Turkey of a Year.)

The presidential transition is officially underway, nearly three weeks after the election. Despite all of our anxious uncertainty, with almost all the votes counted, it’s safe to say the Biden vs. Trump contest wasn’t close. The Electoral College appears to be holding at: Biden 306 vs. Trump 232, a 57% to 43% win.

There are apparently still about 1.3 million votes to count, mostly in NY. Imagine the drama if NY was the state that winning the election hinged on – we’d all be too drunk to carve the turkey!

If we extrapolate the current margins to the votes that remain, it will look like this: The total Biden vote: 80.6 million; the total Trump vote: 74.4 million; the total minor party vote: 3 million, and the total national vote: 158 million. That means nationally, turnout was about 66%, up from 59% in 2016 and that Biden’s popular vote margin will be 51% to 47%.

There was a more interesting margin of victory: Brookings Metro, part of the Brookings Institution, graphed the roughly 500 counties Biden won against the roughly 2,500 counties Trump won, comparing them by economic output. Here is their map of America’s voting, shown as a chart of relative economic output:

This is pictured as a typical Red vs. Blue breakdown, but it’s not about voting. It’s about that portion of the US economy that voted for the two candidates. Seventy percent of America’s economy is generated in the 500 counties Biden won; the 2,500 counties won by Trump produce just 29%.

Back in 2016, Brookings found that the 2,584 counties Trump won generated 36% of the country’s economic output, while the 472 counties won by Hillary Clinton were about 64% of the nation’s economy.

So there are two conclusions: First, the concentration of economic power has increased significantly in the past four years. Second, a real polarization in America is between its two economies.

Blue and Red Americas reflect two very different economies: The Blue one is oriented towards diverse, often college-educated workers in professional and digital services occupations, while the Red leans whiter, less-educated, and more dependent on “traditional” industries, such as mining, manufacturing and farming.

From Brookings Metro: (brackets and emphasis by Wrongo)

“…notably, Biden flipped seven of the nation’s 100 highest-output counties, strengthening the link between these core economic hubs and the Democratic Party. More specifically, Biden flipped half of the 10 most economically significant counties [that] Trump won in 2016, including Phoenix’s Maricopa County; Dallas-Fort Worth’s Tarrant County; Jacksonville, Fla.’s Duval County; Morris County in New Jersey; and Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla.’s Pinellas County.”

Still, Trump’s winning of 74 million votes suggests that 47% of us continue to feel little connection to the nation’s core economic future. This may also help explain why Democrats lost all of the 27 toss-up races in the House and Senate.

If this pattern of one Party attempting to confront the social and economic challenges of a majority of Americans while the other Party stokes the hostility and indignation of a significant minority being left behind, we’ll continue to have not just gridlock, but sustained harm for people and towns throughout America.

The Brookings map shows that wealth and power are not only concentrated, but that the concentration is continuing to grow.

If we fail to build an economy for all, it’s possible that at some point the inequality will reach an extreme. What plays out after that is anyone’s guess.

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