It’s not very sporting, but for weeks I have dreamt of foul weather on Election Day.
Epic, Biden-leaning early voting took place in the last weeks even with COVID-19 still loose and hospitalizations climbing. England is headed into a new month of national lock-down. Leading U.S infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci warns, “We’re in for a whole lot of hurt” as we head into colder, indoor months. “You could not possibly be positioned more poorly,” he told the Washington Post. The Grim Reaper will ship souls via Amazon just to keep up. Black Friday could take on a whole new meaning.
Where England’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson emerged from his COVID-19 hospitalization chastened by the seriousness of the disease, Acting President Donald J. Trump took away no such lesson, writes James Hamblin in The Atlantic. In the weeks since his encounter with “COVID, COVID, COVID,” Trump has gone from downplaying its seriousness to outright denialism, Hamblin explains:
During America’s final lurch into the election, the president has become an even darker caricature of himself, laying bare his willingness to abandon Americans’ health and well-being for his own self-preservation. He is now even more dangerous as a vector of disease than when he was actively shedding the virus.
Your death and the death of your loved ones are totally inconsequential to him. The only survival he cares about is his own. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans he was sworn to protect he sees “only as a messaging issue,” Hamblin laments:
By failing to encourage prevention, Trump has all but guaranteed that many state and local officials will have to order shutdowns. At the same time, Trump has left many Americans without the economic stability or political will to close businesses in any unified way, as many places did in March. No bailout package is forthcoming from Congress, and unemployment insurance is running out in many states. The president is supporting a lawsuit that would overturn the Affordable Care Act and cause millions of people to lose their health-care coverage.
Fortunately, save for Cult 45, the rest of America is not as psychologically damaged as the acting president. They understand Trump as a clear and present danger both to themselves and the country. Those who sat out the 2016 election have braved COVID-19 to vote and help the country correct course. Over two-thirds in Florida and Arizona have cast ballots, the New York Times reports, with 56 percent in Wisconsin and 36 percent in Pennsylvania joining them.
The Times spoke to a few:
Melissa Dibble, 47, of Boynton Beach, Fla., is one of those newly active voters. A registered independent, Ms. Dibble said she did not vote in 2016 because she did not believe Mrs. Clinton was “the right president for our country” and found Mr. Trump “laughable.” She said on Friday that she planned to vote for Mr. Biden that afternoon.Election 2020 ›
“I know how important it is to vote, but I couldn’t wrap my head around the options at that point,” Ms. Dibble said of the 2016 election. She said she was voting for Mr. Biden because “I really want change. I can’t believe that we have a president who is, at night, in bed tweeting nonsense and just talks poorly about people.”
Vince Kowalewski, 73, of Muhlenberg Township, Pa., said he had never voted in his life but was intent on voting against Mr. Trump, whom he called “the worst president we’ve ever had.”
“I have to go in there and vote against him,” Mr. Kowalewski said.
The Affordable Care Act Biden passed as part of the Obama administration provided cancer treatments for Kowalewski’s daughter.
Backing up these anecdotes is a new Times-Sienna poll showing Biden leading in several battleground states.
But like yard signs, polls don’t vote. An historic number of Americans have already, rendering polls at this late date a measure of the national temperature rather than a prediction of how Tuesday’s results will play out. For many us, the election is over except for the vote counting and the expected post-election fallout.
Speaking of…. Dr. Strangelove was on TCM last night. After Ron Suskind‘s and Robert Kagan‘s recent warnings, it seemed strangely appropriate. When Gen. Buck Turgidson presented President Merkin Muffley with his analysis of the strategic situation, to my mind it is sounded as if he said:
But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless distinguishable, post-Nov. 3 environments: one where you got 230 thousand Americans killed, and the other where you got 2.2 million killed.
Well over 200,000 are dead already. What we do in the days ahead will determine how many more will die.
Meteorological divine intervention to dampen Republicans’ last at-bat on Election Day, I hoped, might signal God has not totally forsaken us. Survival is on the line for tens of thousands of Americans. Let there be rain or snow or sleet. But it seems not to be. Weather forecasts for Tuesday in battleground states are annoyingly fine.
“We kept counting on others to save us — our institutions, our political leaders, our courts — but help never arrived”, Kagan wrote. “And as we waited for someone, anyone, to do the right thing, we moved closer to the end.” It comes down to us.