Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Even though Donald Trump will lose the popular vote for the third consecutive national election for president, Kamala Harris will most likely lose the Electoral College vote. I am hardly the first one to make this prediction, but I would like to frame it with a comparison to the finish of a tight scoring basketball game, in which a player shoots the ball toward the basket a fraction of a second before the game clock sounds off. If the score is close enough for that final shot to make a difference in who wins, it’s called a “buzzer beater.” Trump will triumph, but will do so primarily because of another iteration of a “buzzer beater” election, in which he manages to have the referee of the game (aka the Supreme Court) intervene on his behalf in the same way that George W. Bush had its assistance in the election of 2000.
The racist, patriarchal tilt of the playing field should remind us that the lines in Langston Hughes’s poem, “Montage of a Dream Deferred” are still as prescient as they were seventy-five years ago: In a section of “Montage” entitled “Children’s Rhymes.” Hughes has the skip-ropers chanting:
“By what sends
the white kids
I ain’t sent.
I know I can’t
be President.”
I’m afraid that Kamala Harris is going to be the second instance of voters in the United States rejecting the chance to appoint a woman to be the President. If a white woman was not acceptable, what are the odds on a women of color being elected? As dismaying as the answer to that question is, Harris nevertheless still has a better chance of winning than Biden did. At the very least, she will bolster a few congressional races. And who knows? Perhaps she’ll pull off one of the great upsets os 21st century American politics and force Trump to face another jury in a court of law, although this time it won’t be to face charges of financial chicanery, but to defend his attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election.
As to how a guilty verdict in Trump’s election interference case might play out, if Harris were to be elected President, I call attention to a very important article regarding presidential pardoning power.
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As a footnote to the above comment about Vice-President Harris being “a woman of color,” it should be emphasized that Trump as reverted to form and can’t resist the impulse to throw “red meat” to his MAGA base. This time, instead of doubting President Obama’s birth certificate, Trump is questioning whether Harris identifies as African-American.
Trump should have a voice-activated AI-driven computer attached to his ankle in the same way that people under house arrest have a monitor that tracks their whereabouts. Everytime that Trump relies on imagined misinformation, the computer should seeak up in a voice loud enough to drawn out his and correct the record. In attending Howard College, Harris could be said to have announced to the world that she identifies herself with the African-American community.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55690001
About Bill Mohr