Distraction

No news today. Still waiting to get through to the ward but, it being a Sunday, the phone isn’t being picked up.

Meanwhile, at this end of the line, I’ve been doing a prestigious amount of sleeping. I’m trying to catch up the sleep I’ve missed ahead of what I’m sure is going to be a busy few days. Despite everything, I’ve been trying to keep myself busy with coverage of the election.

From a writing perspective, I should hope for a Trump win. He makes it easy to write about politics. The truth is that I’m sick of him. My gut still tells me it’s a win for Biden and dare I even suggest a landslide? Yet “gut” is probably a bad way of describing this kind of instinctive judgement. After all, it’s not pure instinct. It’s more like the vibe you get after watching something for so long. Probably like farmers can smell rain or predict a drought by the way a chicken hops on one leg.

For me, the chicken hopping on one leg is the huge early vote in Texas. It has now eclipsed the total vote from 2016 and that means something big and psychological must be driving people to the polls. I might be totally missing what that impulse is, but I can only think it is disgust with Trump. I just don’t fathom how anybody but a few white supremacists could have not voted for Trump in 2016 and now think he’s their man this time around. I can’t figure out a narrative that explains this other than COVID but, then, if it was only COVID, there would be a big early vote but nothing that explains the excess votes. People who didn’t vote before must be voting now and I fail to see how it’s Republican enthusiasm.

I guess this “prediction” is the easy one, though I’ve been saying that I thought Trump would lose in 2020 for most of the past four years. Hillary was the problem in 2016 like Trump is the problem in 2020. Where I feel less comfortable is with the prospect of an elected contest.

I confess I’ve had a small detail of the election process wrong when I mentioned it in the last podcast. If the electoral college is challenged, everything heads off to Congress where the House of Representatives get to pick the president. I had (lazily, I admit) assumed that since the House is firmly in Democrat hands, they’d pick Biden. I was wrong. It might be in Democrat hands but the vote isn’t straightforward. It’s one vote per state with the side with the most representatives in that state controlling the vote. By that score, it’s the Republicans who would get to pick the President.

The Senate, meanwhile, picks the VP, which where I suppose it gets even crazier.

By this logic, we could still have Trump and Pence after January 20th having been picked by the current Congress. Yet the next Congress might well be controlled by the Democrats. So, if they chose, they could immediately impeach Trump knowing they have the votes to kick him out of office, meaning a Pence presidency…

I still think all this gets too deep into the realm of fantasy but I find it interesting. Myself, I think Trump hasn’t got the power or the support to keep himself in the White House. If Biden wins big, even Republicans won’t be that shameless to defend a losing candidate. I know there’s been many questions in the past about when their oath to the Constitution would kick in, but I think it more likely they’ll abandon Trump (some already have). Once Trump is branded a loser, he loses his voodoo.

4 thoughts on “Distraction”

  1. I think Biden will win big, Trump will concede (whether he wants to or not) and that will be that. From our experience no news is good news as far as the NHS is concerned, they are sharp on the phone when anything isn’t right.

    1. I also think Biden will win. I hope that you you’re right that it’s a big enough win that the Republicans abandon him and leave him yelling about fraud (which he certainly will) into the void. My fear is that he wont concede and then it gets very very messy as you say. Then theres the supreme court… as I said I hope it’s a big enough win that he cant just get them to overturn one state and give him the election. We’ll see. I was going to pick your brains about one thing; can you give me an idea of timing Tuesday night/Wednesday morning? What time to polls close? When do the results start to come in? Etc.

      1. Based on past elections, it’s usually around midnight that the narrative starts to shape, though in 2016 it was the wrong narrative. About 2-3am it started to shift towards Trump and by 5am it was pretty much over. I’m not sure if this time will be different because of the postal vote. Some places aren’t even counting until the next day but I think once we see real polling data coming in, you quickly establish what kind of night it will be. Having said that, of course, the blue wave of 2018 wasn’t spotted for a good few days. I intend (hope) to stay up through the night and cover it. Depends, naturally, on other things but that’s my plan.

    2. Thanks Rob. I got through but could barely understand the staff nurse I spoke to. She said something about my Mum being okay and her talking to her so I’m leaving it until tomorrow. This is typical for weekends, in my experience.

      Yes. Big win… I think.

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Why Dunciad.com?

It’s a cool domain name and it was available. Yes, I know. Available. Crazy, isn’t it?

Really?

Yes. It also helps that it’s also my favourite satire written by Alexander Pope, one of the most metrically pure English poets who also knew his way around a crude insult or two. If you’ve not read it, you should give it a try.

So this is satire, right?

Can’t deny it. There will be some. But it’s also an experiment in writing and drawing, giving work away for free in order to see how many people are willing to support a writer doing his thing. It’s the weird stuff that I wouldn’t get published elsewhere in this word of diminishing demands and cookie-cutter tastes.