Addendum to the adjustment to the previous analysis – I swear I’ve got my story straight now. My original prediction is back on, silly me to doubt the Teflon survivability of the Donald. Thanks to the Georgia senate races, the Republicans have no choice but to fall in line behind Trump’s effort to uncover election fraud, whether real or imagined.
Why is that? Well, the future of the senate is on the line, and nothing scares the people who whisper into Mitch McConnell’s ear more than the possibility of a ‘blue wave’ of crazy communist ideas like financial regulation and affordable healthcare. So, while I suspect that the aptly named ‘Grim Reaper’ (Mitch) does not personally want to support Trump, he has no choice if he wants to keep his job. For the Republicans to abandon Trump now and accept the Biden win would be a crushing blow to their efforts to keep the Georgia senate seats under control. The Left would have nearly two months to build up enthusiasm and financial support for the run-off races with hardly any resistance from the other side. So, the Right needs to build a counter-narrative to the ‘blue wave’, some ingenious scheme to keep the hallmark traditions of Washington – division and impotence – alive and well.
Enter Trump. Jesus, no matter what you think of the man, you’ve got to give credit where credit is due. This man had nearly the entire world – even his own family members – telling him to concede and accept the results. Absolutely no way out, not a single person came out in support for him the first few days after the election, and he didn’t appear to even consider conceding for a moment. How, in the face of apparently impossible odds and certain defeat, does someone gather the balls to press on full steam and trust that something will come his way?
And it did, in the form of a .3% voting gap in a Georgia senate race. Without that unusual twist of fate, the Donald would be no more, the Republicans would have hung him out to dry and been happy with four more years of obstructionism via the senate majority.
But now all hell is breaking loose. Mitch is on board. We’ve got the Attorney General giving an unprecedented approval for lawyers to investigate voter fraud allegations before the election is even certified. And if well-connected D.C. lawyers want to “find” election fraud, they can find it – with or without legitimate evidence.
On the other side, there really isn’t a whole lot the Left can do. Some genius jumped the gun by releasing the COVID vaccine news the very next day after Biden was announced the presumptive winner, which looks extremely suspect for Democrats. They can try and beat Trump at his own game by suing the election officials as well – which it appears they might do – but that will only play into his narrative.
The appeal of Trump, which the establishment Democrats still somehow don’t seem to grasp (well they probably do but don’t want to embrace that wing of their party – a dicey bit of political calculus that Pelosi is trying to navigate this very moment), is that he recognizes the anger of the people and has positioned himself as a populist candidate. People are just sick and tired of business as usual, it’s been administration after administration where the rich keep getting richer and they keep getting poorer. Trump is savvy enough to understand the importance of this sentiment – “drain the swamp” and all that. He knows that people are fed up with the corruption of D.C. politics, and by going it alone against the broken machine of Washington he reminds them of their own struggle, the underdog trying to fight against seemingly insurmountable forces. He also understands that perception is often more important than reality, especially in politics. Whether fraud occurred or not doesn’t really matter, it is the public perception that will sway the judges and the news to go along with his relentless litigation – to play his game. And he plays it to perfection.
So what now? We’ve got a game of political chicken and a naked power grab. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the likely chaos that is and will continue to unfold – competing lawsuits, competing narratives on either side of the media trying to establish control, all this while 54 million U.S. residents are struggling for food. Voters and corporate executives alike are getting more pissed off by the day as no stimulus deal or coherent COVID plan seem to even be on the horizon.
The pressure is on for everyone in Washington to figure something out quick. All except one man – the chaos candidate, the master bullshitter who spins stories and lawsuits in his sleep. All it takes is one semi-legitimate piece of evidence, one compelling story that the media agrees to latch on to, and then doubt has been cast on the entire process. This house of cards can collapse in an instant, and the Donald is holding the trump card – total fearlessness with nothing left to lose. He could feed the entire Republican party to the wolves right now if he wanted, just by conceding the election. So Trump is their only hope, and they have to pretend that they are begrudgingly going along with his “desperate” search for election fraud, when in fact it is all that stands in between them and the dreaded blue wave.
The far left has a real opportunity here, if they could get over their wanton hatred of Trump. They could align with him, since it doesn’t really matter who is president anyway if they could get both houses of congress. Trump certainly doesn’t care what policies he endorses, he just wants to win. Unfortunately, the left is hell-bent on getting rid of this man at all costs, which in and of itself assures their own complicity in this national farce we call a government. Trump seems to be some kind of political black hole, he somehow thrives and flourishes off of the hatred and animosity of those who oppose him. Maybe, since their strategy of fighting him hasn’t worked in four years, the far left could find it in their hearts to bring him on board and dump the moderate Democrats that offer little more than the Republicans at this point. But that is a real long-shot.
I’m a betting man, and I’m telling you now – its time to head for the exit doors. Bitcoin revolution!
Jeff Nirenberg 