This hasn’t been a very funny week. The funniest thing all week has been the ongoing call from Trump, echoed by his supporters, to stop the vote counting in precisely those states where Biden is currently ahead in the count. This is going to help Trump how? It’s a good joke, but the delivery has been too long.
Here on Friday AM, we are waiting for Nevada to wrap things up so we can start breathing again. It looks like Biden is ahead in Georgia, but that could be a mirage. The outstanding absentee ballots there include overseas military, and who knows which way they’ll swing, and anyway, the race in Georgia is going to be so close it will almost surely trigger a recount.
Of course Trump wants to stop the count there, right now, haha, meaning the Georgia recount will be required by law. So stopping the count now forces the count to restart all over. The joke is only three days old and already it has advanced dementia.
Meanwhile, Georgia has granted the Democrats a reprieve in their quest to take control of the Senate. There will be not one but two January runoff elections for the U.S. Senate positions from that state, and if the Democrats win both of those, and Biden is president, Kamala Harris will be breaking ties for them. I don’t know what the odds are of the Dems pulling that off, but hey, it’s got to feel better than what they were looking at three days ago. All is not lost today; all can be lost two months from now. No rush.
As I write this, I’m constantly looking at the electoral college map, checking for updates. A minute ago, Biden squeaked into a lead in Pennsylvania. Now would be a great time for Trump to demand the counting of the vote stop in that state. He should sue to make them stop and freeze the results as they are now.
The fear that applies to the narrow Georgia lead applies to Pennsylvania: Is it a mirage? Will it widen enough to avoid a mandated recount? If not, votes could be getting counted until Thanksgiving in both states.
Then we’re back to Nevada. What’s taking them so long? The count there has been stuck at 84% of the votes since Wednesday. What are they waiting for? Did they forget to pay their phone bill? Couldn’t they send us a telegram?
I know very little about Nevada. The only times I’ve been there were the four or five times my parents dropped me off at motels while they hit the casinos, for that many weekends. I think the last time was on the edge of Las Vegas when I was 12. My big adventure was exploring the desert out back behind the motel. My one take-away from that was seashells. Literally. I took seashells away. Where’d all the seashells come from?
While my parents were losing Dad’s retirement money in slot machines, I was discovering the ancient prehistoric inland sea. Maybe Nevada will finish counting their ballots when the sea returns.
I know even less about Georgia. I have not one memory of ever being there. I may have been there for a few hours as my parents drove me through the state when I was two weeks old. No, that’s wrong — that would have been North Carolina. Oh, I might have flown over the state on my way to or from Florida.
Almost everything I know about Georgia I know from Wikipedia. Population 10.6 million: 60% White, 30.5% Black, the rest Other or Not Saying.
This brings up another funny, long-playing joke out of Trump. Our president imagines he is good at dog-whistling.
Now, the whole idea about dog-whistling is only the dogs are supposed to hear it. If everyone hears it, it’s not dog-whistling. If you think you’re blowing a dog-whistle, but actually everyone hears it, that’s comedy. You have genuine farce right there.
Trump has been whistling to racists for more than five years. MAGA means Make America Like It Was Before The Civil Rights Act. We all know that. Hence the comedy. It’s not real dog-whistling.
Even if Georgia swings back to Trump before this is over, the point will have been made. A sizable percentage of the population heard the whistling and disapproved.
Dr. Wes Browning is a one time math professor who has experienced homelessness several times. He supplied the art for the first cover of Real Change in November of 1994 and has been involved with the organization ever since. This is his weekly column, Adventures in Irony, a dry verbal romp of the absurd. He can be reached at drwes (at) realchangenews (dot) org
Read more of the Nov. 11-17, 2020 issue.