The election of the next president of the United States will pivot on a total of less than a thousand votes cast in two states: North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Here are two potential Electoral College maps with the outcome of the election.
Assuming that Harris wins Wisconsin and Michigan, she can lose North Carolina and Georgia and still win the election with 270 Electoral College votes.
Or, on the other hand, she can win Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina, but if she loses Pennsylvania, Trump will regain the White House with 271 Electoral College votes.
Pennsylvania is to the 2024 election what Florida was to the election of 2000, in which Bush edged Gore by a handful of disputed votes, underscored by a politically motivated disenfranchisement campaign.
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Even if Harris were to win both North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Trump will challenge the outcome in a number of ways, and I have ideas for two political cartoons.
Cartoon Number One:
Image:
Trump is standing at the counter of a ramshackle bait and tackle retail store, his face scrunched with smirking impatience. A sign on the wall behind the balding man at the cash register reads:
Burner Phones — 10 percent off
Trump says: “Since when do you do background checks for burner phones?”
(Alternate line: “Just put it on my tab.”)
Follow-up Second Cartoon:
Trump is at Mar-a-Lago, siting at his desk. Phone in hand. SCOTUS Chief Justice Roberts is at his desk at the Supreme Court. Roberts is holding a newspaper, dated November 10, 2024
Newspaper headline “Harris Wins White House”
Trump’s Caption: “I just need you to find me four more votes.”
As such, given this likely scenario, what Harris and her campaign must begin doing right now is filming — and buying time for — a two week advertising campaign that will culminate on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving Day. Every airport television at the bars where people are sipping their drinks and waiting for their flights should be filled with brief snippets of factual statements that remind people of the legitimacy of the vote. . What is needed is that on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, Americans have accepted Harris’s victory in the election, even if it is by the thinnest of margins. Advertising based on facts is the only guardrail that will preserve democracy.
It wouldn’t hurt, of course, to remind people of one thing I am certain of: Trump will lose the popular vote for the third election in a row. “Three time loser! Three time loser!” That should be the mantra of November 15th, 2024.
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The problem with Kristoff’s column is that it’s not the supporters of Trump as a candidate for president that I wish to demean. Rather, it is their unwillingness to accept the results of a free and fair election. They were fine with the election of 2016. Why? Because they won. However, when their candidate loses, suddenly it becomes a case of the other side having “stolen” the election and then exploding in fory and trashing the Capitol building to vent about their disappointment.
Trump is going to lose the popular vote for the third time in a row.
Can his supporters say that out loud and admit that this is a true statement?
If they can’t, then it is not being some kind of supercilious, smug member of a cadres of “elites” to say that we as a nation have a real problem.
If Trump loses to Harris, the one factor he should first consider is how his willingness to play to his base on the issue of health care during his term of office affected the 2024 election. After all, abortion is fundamentally a health care issue. Therefore, instead of Trump demeaning VP Harris and Ms. Clinton with a comment about blowjobs. an accurate pairing in a social media post of “odd coincidences” by Trump would be the juxtaposition of Hillary Clinton and himself with a caption, “Isn’t it funny how heelth care impacted both of our careers in different ways?”
Let us reoollect something that Hillary and Bill Clinton would like all voters to forget, but which Trump voters haven’t forgotten. Hillary and Bill betrayed working people in the 1992 election. What part of “job training” don’t you you two dumb asses named Clinton understand? Instead of focusing immediately on the need to become training the work force to pivot with the oncoming post-manufacturing economy, Hillary Clinton (in particular)_ took the lead in trying to reform health care. Uh, excuse me, Hillary. You didn’t campaign on that. I, for one, did not vote for that. I voted for you because I heard your husband promise “uob training” at a rally I attended in 1992. And I worked phone banks for the CWA so that my first wife could get job training as she entered her early 40s.And you betrayed us, and instead failed even to change the health care system. What a belly flop!
So, health care was a big mistake as the thing to focus on in 1992.
In a similar manner, Trump and the GOP’s desire to seize the moment and go for the Supreme Court in his first term was ultimately a decision to focus on health care rather than the economy. Trump couldn’t resist a chance to play to his base, so he went for it, instead of waiting for it to happen in a second term. Subsequent to his first term — but couse directly related to his decisions in hi first term, Roe versus Wade was reversed, and now instead of economic issues being the front-runner in the 2024 election, it’s a health-care issue that has shot to the top for many women voters. Yes, grocery bills are higher, but they would be even higher if one had even another mouth to feed. Family size is a personal choice, not a state-sanctioned infringement on one’s reproductive rights.
About Bill Mohr