Elections 2020, Predictions Revisited

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"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)

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The day before the 2020 Elections in this space I published a set of predictions about themand Trump. I thought that it would be fun (and perhaps instructive too) to revisit them and see just how accurate and inaccurate they were.

1. I said that Trump could not "win re-election, that is legitimately win by garnering the largest number of votes in the Electoral College. Unless all of the polls are way, and I mean WAY, off, and IF all the votes are counted, Biden will win." But, I went on, "Trump could remain as President past 12:01PM, on Jan. 20, 2021, IF all the votes are not counted and the Supreme Court certifies that they do not have to be, as they did in Bush v. Gore, (Florida) 2020." The most important point here, I think, is that the controversy which Trump and his people stoked and stoked and stoked never managed to make it to the Supreme Court, in large part because they were never able to convince even one lower court, with a "Trump-judge" or not, that they had a case.

Further on the "Supreme Court and Trump" issue, later in that column I said that:

"Chief Justice Roberts has made it clear that he would like to secure the reputation of the Court as a Court-of-final-decision and not a final political body. Yes, he was on the team that made Bush v. Gore possible (with of course Kavanaugh and Barrett). But that was then and this time is different. Trump is a totally self-consumed, out-of-control, idiot. Not the type of person right-wing institutionalists like Roberts want in control of the Federal government. Although the Justice-from-the-Heritage Foundation, Thomas (his wife is a V-P there) and Alito would probably vote for Trump no matter what, Roberts would only need to get one vote from Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch, and Trump would be shown the door. I have confidence that he could do that, for they would be getting enough phone calls from interested parties in, for example, finance, banking, real estate, retail, transportation, and the law (on their VERY private lines, of course). "

But Roberts made sure that the issue never did get to that point.

2. My next point was this: "Many observers have noted that this is one of the most important elections in U.S. history. Among the contenders are those of 1860, 1864, 1932, and 1940. In my view, this is THE most important election in U.S. history, for two reasons. A) If Trump does remain as President and the Republicans retain the Senate majority, as what I have deemed the "Accidental Fascist" he will install a version of fascism. B) But beyond that, it would bring a wider tragedy. Trump himself and many of his closest advisors are Climate Change Deniers. In my view, the worst feature of a Trump 2^nd term would be the end of any possibility of controlling the Global Warming that has been over-taking the world for the last 40 years or so (and of course actually began with the beginning of the coal-fired Industrial Revolution in the 18^th century). A second Trump term would have meant the World-Wide Triumph of "The Planet-Killer International Fossil Fuel Industry."

For that one, at least for now, one PHEW!

3. As I have done numerous times in my numerous "Trump columns" over the years I noted that Trump is not a liar. By definition, a liar is someone who tells a falsehood, knowing it to be a falsehood. When Trump makes a statement that is provably false to most observers, he does not know it to be false or he just does not think it to be false. Each time, he actually thinks his statements are true. That is how come over time he can make two completely contradictory statements but at the time, and sometimes even at about the same time he is making them he can regard them each as true.

An example of that reality were the statements about the oncoming pandemic he made in February, 2020 to Bob Woodward privately while at the same time he was making statements, in chorus with Sean Hannity, about the "Democrat epidemic-hoax." For Trump's mind the contradiction just didn't register. Applying this understanding of how his mind works to the present time, when Trump says, over-and-over again, that the election was stolen from him, he really believes it --- in the sense that in huis mind there really were precisely the number of votes in Georgia that were not counted that could have put him over the top. In his mind, those 11,800 votes that he was asking Gov. Kemp "to find" really exist, somewhere.

4. Right up to the last minute there was no Barr-generated "October Surprise." Not that Barr didn't try, as in the "Durham Investigation" of "Trump-Russia." That there was nothing to find, especially in re the Mueller Investigation, which both Trump and Barr very seriously wanted to discredit (as Barr had attempted to do, with some success, when it originally came out) says a lot about the veracity of the Mueller Report. One hopes, at least I do, that one of the previously unreleased documents from the Time of Trump that we will get to see is the full, un-redacted version of the Report (minus of course the transcripts of any grand jury proceedings, which must be kept secret by law). If it is released it will likely be a bomb-shell lighting up both Trump and Barr. We shall see what A.G. Garland and Pres. Biden decide to do about this one. In any case, if Trump had been re-elected, Barr would not have lasted long, if only because he couldn't make something out of Durham's investigations, in contrast with the fact that in the minds of some anyway (see the Fox"News" crowd), he was able to make it out that "Mueller" cleared Trump.

5. I noted that "it's just fascinating, isn't it, that the 'law and order' President is just fine with such things as the extra-judicial execution of a suspected assassin of a right-wing vigilante in Oregon, the murders of Black-Life Matters demonstrators by a right-wing self-styled "guard" in Kenosha, WI, and the threats of violence to persons riding on a Biden-Harris campaign bus in Texas. Interestingly enough, the Trump banners and over-sized US flags that the Texas-terrorists were flying were exactly the same as the ones I saw flying in a large pro-Trump pick-up truck demo. that drove through downtown Port Jefferson, NY this past Saturday. They are obviously mass-produced and then distributed all over the country. That is not a cheap endeavour. Is that possibly the reason why the Trump campaign is so short of funds?"

Of course, at the time few could have imagined the "Trumpsurrection2021Â ©", which just happened to be accompanied by a plethora of those self-same obviously mass-produced flags and banners. One does have to wonder just why so many of them were produced up front, anyway, where they are produced and by whom, who or what is paying for them, and so on and so forth. Hopefully, one or more investigative reporters are working on this one.

6. Trump used his Box of Magic Tricksright to the bitter end of the campaign, and still is (see "2" below). The Tricks are: 1. The protectors and enablers, either personal, or financial or both, that have always surrounded him. 2. His standard response when he faces an adversary of any kind, real or imagined is: "Always attack; Never defend." 3. "When you run into a problem, just sue." 4. Never be responsible to anyone else. 5. As he has lived his whole life, Trump is surrounded by enemies, real or imagined or created for the purpose (even if totally irrational, like making the virus into a personal enemy that he has to send his warriors out to defeat). Finally, 6, Trump is history's greatest con man, a skill which he ran on right to the end of the campaign --- and beyond to the Greatest Grift in Presidential History, perhaps the greatest one in the history of U.S. politics.

Further one can note here that Trump has now added a Seventh Magic Trick: Playing Victim. Actually, it has been there all along and I just missed it. It's just that now, as the legal troubles mount, he will have to be using it with an increasing level of intensity.

7. The question is often asked (I said back then), why is the ordinary Trump voter a Trump voter? As I said back in 2019, the Trumpublicans would be running on " 'The 6 R's' and 'The 2 C's' ": Racism, Rage, Red-baiting, Religiosity, Repression (of the vote), and Russian (interference); and The Two C's: Cheating and Conspiracy Theories. Going into the last month or so, Trump has reduced them pretty much to Racism, Rage (at his purported enemies, including of course the "Fake News,") Red-baiting, Repression (of the vote, attempted, anyway), and its companion, Cheating. The crowds are lapping up the first three "R's". And so are his voters (for some of them add religiosity).

And the fact that so many Republican voters are continuing to stick with him and the "Stop the Steal/Rigged Election" scam tells one just how effective the Trump Propaganda Campaign, even minus Twitter, continues to be.

8. I do have to say (along with many other election-observers/predictors) that I thought that Biden would win the popular vote (WOW, went out on a limb there), and I also thought that he would win the Electoral vote. However, I don't think that anyone could have predicted that in three of the "battleground states," a switch of 43,000 votes from Biden to Trump would have led to a tie in the Electoral College.

9. Finally, I predicted that if Trump lost in the Electoral College that "after resigning and getting his pardon from Pence, Trump would be grabbing the next charter flight from whichever company he could finagle into doing it for him, outtahere, with as much of whatever is left of his money as he could take with him. Too much legal trouble to be facing, both criminal and civil. Much too much. That is, unless he is prevented from doing so by one or more security agencies who do not want anybody who has that amount of top-secret information that could be sold to the highest bidder, outtahere."

Well, that one sure was wrong. Instead, we have the "Trumpsurrection2021Â ©," the perpetuation of the "Rigged Election" myth that so many of his supporters believe in --- setting up Trump's own Nazi-like "Stab-in-the-Back" myth for 2024 --- and etc. Of course, Trump's legal difficulties --- civil as well as criminal --- are rapidly escalating. So in the end, he might, just might, not be able to put himself past them. But given his track record up until now, I wouldn't count on it. I'll say it again: he is history's greatest con man. One cannot know how many tricks he has left up his ample sleeves.