It's just after 4:30 p.m. Friday afternoon, and so far the Presidential votes have not been completely counted. Joe Biden seems to be have a good chance of eking out a victory despite his best efforts, but it isn't settled yet. So I'm seeing stuff like this, responding to a report that "the FBI is assisting local police in Los Angeles who are investigating a man who allegedly posted a threat on social media to commit a mass shooting if Joe Biden wins."
Call the fucking race!!! This is only going to get worse until the networks have some backbone.When it gets down to it, liberals and leftists are every bit as irrational as the right. Calling the race prematurely wouldn't tranquilize Trump's base -- probably the opposite -- and I think the same motive that has Trumpian mobs outside vote-counting locations motivated this person: Stop everything right now and give me what I want, I don't care about facts. This person is just as ready as they are to stop counting votes.
Then there was this:
BREAKING
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins is reporting that White House aides are trying to determine the best way to stage an “intervention” to tell President Trump he has no hope of remaining in the Oval Office for a second term.
... followed by some liberal clucking, such as "Incredible. Like they're trying to avoid a three year old's temper tantrum. This is supposed to be a grown man. The fact alone that this seems necessary is reason enough to never give him that kind of power in the first place." Or "good lord. We don't placate our two-year-old with that level of mollycoddling." These reactions are understandable, but not what I consider examples of rational, reality-based thought. Again, the votes have not all been counted yet.
It was pointed out earlier today that concession speeches and the like are norms, not a practice mandated by the Constitution or statute. That much abused-word "performativity" is pertinent: an election is not over when one candidate concedes, but when the votes are counted and certified. Nor is it over when the Associated Press declares a winner, for the same reason. (And lest we forget, Clinton cultists threw similar tantrums in November 2016 and for four years afterward. "Not my President! Not my President!")
The best news, for some version of "best," looks like this at the moment:
The whole thread and comments are interesting, if only to watch some centrist commentators trying to explain the trend away. This one was perhaps the funniest: "Spin it all you want. Defund the Police was a winner for the GOP." As someone replied, "It clearly wasn't, when the main proponents won and the main opponents lost. Go be a Republican with that much brain rot." I've seen a number of people at varying levels trying to deny the results in other threads. What cannot be must not be.
I'm going to risk a forecast of my own, just because it has always been true before: America's mainstream journalistic pundits, scenting a likely Biden victory, are already drafting op-eds and columns urging Biden to move to the center, the sacred center.
Well, I'm going to wrap this up now, before the remaining vote counts are announced. I'll be glad when this is over, but I can wait a few more hours, even a day or two, for all the votes to be counted. Better a slight delay than a rushed and incomplete announcement that has to be retracted: that, I think, would drive people even crazier than they are already. We've seen a taste of that with states that have been called prematurely in the past few days. I can't help thinking that no matter what the outcome, we're in for at least four more years of caterwauling, from Republicans and Democrats alike.
