Your generous
donations help keep
this site running.
Visa/MC/PayPal accepted.
Welcome back to the second part of our annual year-end awards column series! If you missed it, you can check out last week's installment too. But a warning -- for both this column and last week's -- they're long. Incredibly long. Monstrously long. It's been that kind of year, what can we say?
What a year. Seriously, that was a tough one for us all, wasn't it?
Before we begin with the awards, I would just like to thank all the people -- both online and in person -- who helped out by giving me their suggestions and nominations for all of these awards. I have tried to credit individuals where appropriate, but I probably forgot to do so here and there too, so I apologize in advance.
Once again, it's been a momentous week in American presidential history. Right as we were writing last week's column, the Supreme Court laughed President Donald Trump's last-ditch legal effort to overturn the will of the voters of multiple states right out of court. They were entirely correct in unanimously turning the case down, because it was so very laughable a concept to begin with. Texas was essentially arguing that it should be able to have a veto over any other state's election, because they didn't approve of that state's election process (in reality, what they really didn't approve of was who won those states). Coincidentally enough, they only complained about the states which, if their votes had been denied, would have handed the election to Trump -- even though several other states (including some red ones) had done exactly what Texas was complaining about in the four states they tried to sue. It was all nakedly transparent, and not based in any legal or constitutional foundation whatsoever. Which, again, is why it got unanimously laughed out of the highest court in the land.
One particularly apt metaphor was making the rounds yesterday, to describe two very different events. It was, we were told, "D-Day." The significance of this is that D-Day wasn't the actual end of World War II -- not by a long shot. What it was, however, was just as important: it marked the real beginning of the end.
I just spent a few hours watching the Electoral College vote. Now, admittedly I am a pretty wonky political guy, but I have never before paid even the slightest attention to the formality of each state's electors meeting to cast their official ballots to elect the next president. It was always an afterthought, a mere formality. Something you'd hear about maybe a day or so after it happened, because it was of no real consequence. Even in the midst of the 2000 Bush v. Gore fight, nobody really paid much attention to the Electoral College, because it simply wasn't all that relevant to the legal fight.
President Donald Trump, as we all know full well by now, has truly become the thing he hates the most: a total loser.
He's lost the 2020 election so many times, it's hard to keep track of them all. First, he lost when all the votes were counted. Then he lost after he demanded they recount the votes. Then he lost when all the states certified their results. Then he lost when all the states named their electors to the Electoral College. Monday, he's going to lose the biggest one yet, as the Electoral College votes 306-232 for Joe Biden.
That title can be read in one of two ways. The first is more poetic, based on the old "de Nile ain't just a river in Egypt" joke. As a river ends, it empties into the sea through a large delta. Or it can be read the way math and science uses the term. "Delta" (Δ) is the Greek letter used to signify "change in" (a rocket scientist talks about "delta-vee" instead of "change in velocity," for instance). Either way, though it signifies that the rampant denial in the Republican Party right now is soon going to have to change, and that that day is rapidly approaching.
That headline is meant as a joke, because the much-more-typical headline of its type (that lazy political writers love to use) is: "Democrats In Disarray." But this week the Trump circus is finally beginning to realize that it's almost time to fold its tents and leave town, and the result has been the party beginning to eat its own, as it tries to figure out how to cope with the looming post-Trump era.
This isn't just the Keystone Kops, it's now a full-on Keystone Koup attempt. Before we get to any of it, however, we have to pause to wish Joseph Robinette Biden Junior a happy 78th birthday. Many happy returns, Joe!
Biden is now several steps closer to being sworn in as America's next president in less than nine weeks, as state after state certifies that Biden did indeed beat Donald Trump. Georgia did so today, and several other important states are slated to do so on Monday. By December 8th, all states will have done so and appointed their electors to the Electoral College.
President Donald Trump is the lamest of lame ducks right now. He is so lost in his fantasy that he somehow didn't lose the election to Joe Biden that he has almost completely stopped even any pretense of doing his job. He rouses himself out of his funk to occasionally fire someone who has annoyed him in some way, but that's about it, really. Otherwise his time is consumed by all the sour grapes served up at his giant pity party.