The Man Who Came to the White House--And Stayed

It's been three weeks since the election, and only now has President Donald Trump gotten over himself long enough to allow his successor. President-elect Joe Biden, to begin the transition in earnest prior to his inauguration on January 20.  The General Services Administration gave the go-ahead on Monday.  Biden and his transition team can finally look over all the correspondence and briefings he needs to know about.

But don't think for one moment Trump has abandoned his increasingly quixotic quest to regain the Presidency, in spite of evidence to the contrary.  He has yet to concede the election to Biden, even though the former vice-president has amassed 80 million votes to Trump's 73 million--more than any other candidate in history.  Biden also leads in the Electoral College vote 306 to 232.

Claiming voter fraud and other irregularities, Trump and his gang of fools (also known as his attorneys) have been striking out in the courtrooms of battleground states, leaving behind hollow reassurances to the President's base at every parking lot and strip mall they could find. They haven't looked good doing so, not even with Rudy Giuliani's hair dye.

It's not as though Trump is all that eager to do his job these days.  There's a pandemic going on with 12 million cases of Covid-19, a quarter of a million dead, and people ignoring pleas to mask up and stay home this Thanksgiving--even with vaccines on the horizon.  You've heard of the phrase "when the going gets tough, the tough get going"?  With this President, when the going gets tough, the tough tweets, watches Fox News, then goes golfing.

Meanwhile, Biden has been busy putting together his new staff during the delay, while at the same time reassuring the country that help is on its way.  The President-elect announced his national security cabinet, which includes familiar names such as Janet Yellin for Secretary of the Treasury and former Senator and 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry as climate advisor.  Most of the rest of the nominees (pending Senate approval) are diverse and experienced in government affairs, unlike the revolving door of unqualified yes-people and family members who served during Trump's administration.

It looks like the Democratic "blue wave" in Congress never materialized, which makes Biden's efforts to get things done a lot more complicated.  The Democrats still have the House of Representatives by a 220-208 margin.  But the GOP is still holding on to the Senate 50-46, pending the outcomes of two runoff races in Georgia, meaning Biden might still have Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to deal with.

One reason Trump is taking desperate measures to keep his job is that once he leaves office, he faces numerous federal and state charges against him for everything from financial fraud to sexual assault.  It is more likely, however, that Trump will be filing for bankruptcy rather than see a day behind bars.  He's already on his way to letting his cronies go scot-free, having pardoned Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.  Maybe he'll do the same thing for himself and his family.

So whether Trump finally throws in the towel and concedes, or waits for the Electoral College to to decide his fate, his spectre for the next few weeks will be hanging over the White House like an unwanted house guest who's stayed too long.  Because if he can't move on, neither can the country.

 

Biden Wins. Trump Pouts.

After four agonizing days and nights of needing just one or two more states to make it past the Electoral College-mandated 270 mark, former Vice President Joe Biden finally passed that hurdle when the TV networks declared him the winner in Pennsylvania Saturday morning. He will become the 46th President of the United States on January 20, 2021.  Senator Kamala Harris of California becomes the first woman and person of color to be Vice President.

The votes are still being counted as of November 7 in Arizona, Nevada and Georgia with Biden in the lead.  But Pennsylvania was the big prize with 20 electoral votes.  Biden won more popular votes than anyone in history with more than 74 million.

Donald Trump becomes the first President since 1992 to be defeated for a second term.  For a man who's used to "so much winning", as he might have put it, he's not handling losing very well.  His nationally-televised rants about Democrats committing voter fraud and threats of suing his way to a second term, possibly all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, did nothing but paint him as a desperate old man clinging to the spotlight.  And what was he doing when Biden was announced as the winner?  Playing golf, which is a typical move whenever the President wants to get away from reality. Conceding?  Are you kidding?

But Trump won over 70 million votes, and if that doesn't tell you how divided the United States is right now, I don't know what will.  Seems there are a lot more folks outside his political base who liked how he's handled the coronavirus pandemic (which is currently near ten million cases and over 236,000 dead, with the worst still to come), the pre-Covid economy and other kinds of behavior unbecoming a President.  If Trump had so much as taken the pandemic seriously, not only would he have saved a lot of lives, but he would have won a second term too.  

As it stands, Biden won because people got sick of all the lies, all the racism, all the tweeting, all the corruption, all the nepotism, all the spinelessness of the GOP, all the ignoring of his Western allies and coddling of dictators, and, most importantly, ALL TRUMP ALL THE TIME. By contrast, Biden has been in and out of public office for nearly 50 years and seems to know how to deal with the world.  He may be older than Trump (78 by inauguration), but he's exactly what America needs right now.  Boring but competent.

Now that it's all over but the pouting, the next three months should be interesting.  As President-elect Biden and his transition team hit the ground running, what will President Trump be doing in the days before his TV show of an administration goes off the air?  Will he cooperate with Biden's team?  Will he fire everyone right and left?  Will he find a way to stay out of prison?  Or will he simply fade into America's collective rear view mirror?