The last month since the election has found yours truly seeking some level of normalcy in life, and draw-down from the height of the emotions from the end of the campaign. This has been largely thwarted by the fact that the campaign did not in fact end on November 8, but it is fact ongoing, as many Democrats and liberals are still determined to prevent Trump from taking office on January 20.
In effect, the most interesting things to follow have not been what Trump will do, but what others are trying to do to stop him. These have been highly fascinating to someone like myself who is a long-time student of elections. Nothing like this has ever happened, so I am forced by my nature to pay close attention to it.
There have been three phases so far:
1. The Riots (first week after the election). Concentrated in cities such as Portland, Oakland, and New York (the usual suspects). Some of it possibly organized and promoted with funding by Soros (to create an American "color revolution"), and some of it no doubt spontaneous. These petered out when it was evident that they would serve no other purpose that the immolation of random vehicles.
2. The Big Recount (mid-November to late November). Remember how I predicted last March that you would be hearing a lot more about the obscure person known as Jill Stein (see Young Sanders-Stein)? You didn't believe me then, did you? Now, after all the ballots were cast, she was finally in her glory, again possibly with Soros backing and Hillary's tacit approval, trying to erase her image among liberals as election spoiler and become the stalking horse for a Hillary victory after the fact. The liberal media shunned her before November 8 but now they couldn't give her enough attention. Of course, it didn't work, as Bill Clinton seems to have warned his wife, amidst her tantrum. This second phase came to a climax over the weekend after Thanksgiving, as the Democrats in Pennsylvania unloaded their last salvo of absentee votes, in an attempt to convince a federal judge to overrule the state law regarding recounts. The attempt failed and even backfired, as most things do that try to take down Trump. The Wisconsin recount buttressed the existing result, and the partial one in Michigan served only to uncover what is most likely widespread vote fraud among the heavily Democratic precincts of Detroit (where it seems it is common practice to run the votes through the optical scanners multiple times).
3. The Electoral College Coup. The current phase is to try to convince enough Republican electors of the Electoral College (which votes on December 19) to "vote their conscience" and cast their ballots for someone other than Trump. This would ideally have the effect of lowering his count below 270, thus throwing the election to the House of Representatives. The rules there favor the Republicans, but perhaps they can choose John Kasich (amazing we are still talking about that guy). This concept is being promoted by the sudden emergence of a claim of the election being hacked by the Russians somehow (something the mainstream media assured us was impossible just six weeks ago). The way that the liberals are losing their minds over this issue is one of the most pitiful sights I have ever beheld in all of my years following American elections since 1972.
As I said, all of this is very fascinating from an electoral point of view. By its sheer novelty, it is forcing me to pay attention. Of course it's not going to stop Trump, but the point of it, as many have suggested, is to create the basis for a stance among liberals that he is not a legitimate president. This will likely serve them about as well as the stance that he was not a legitimate candidate in 2015. But it will allow them to feel righteous, which to liberals is the most important thing, even as they set themselves up for another round of electoral disaster. So be it.
The biggest thing that concerns me is Step 4, which we will enter after December 19 when Trump wins the Electoral College vote and officially becomes "President Elect." What will the Establishment, and their liberal and conservative shock troops, do then?
Things are so weird that I've temporarily lost my ability to see down the road very far. We are living in the haze of novel battlefield, and few of us can see the terrain very far. I can only go by what the Tweets are saying, and the one that seems to come up over and over, as far as the next step, is
4. War with Russia (late December, early January, during the waning weeks of the Obama Administration). This seems preposterous, but the groundwork has certainly been laid for this to happen, in public opinion among the media, and even among Establishment Republicans in the Senate (or "traitors", as the Trump supporters call them). If one assumes that the Establishment will do anything to stop Trump, whom they see as the living apocalypse of their control, then one can easily conclude that this option is not off the table. In the minds of many Trump-supporting analysts, this is exactly what Hillary was going to deliver during her presidency, and now they must have it, as soon as possible. They have until January 20 to start it. They will have, apparently, the means, motive and opportunity to achieve it.
I really hope this doesn't happen. I really hope that by January 20 this semi-prediction will appear to have been foolishly alarmist.
But the only thing that doesn't surprise me lately is normalcy.
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