The danger we face
Donald Trump is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to someone who has never had an unspoken thought. Speaking over the engine noise of Marine One (and in spite of my secret Vic Morrow curse on him) Trump said, “We need nine justices. You need that. With the unsolicited millions of ballots that they’re sending, it’s a scam. It’s a hoax. Everybody knows that. And the Democrats know it better than anybody else. So you’re gonna need nine justices up there, they’re going to be very important.”
Out of the mouths of babes, as they say. Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, consider yourselves warned. Trump’s game plan is simple and evil. He is hoping for a close election that he can contest and throw to the Supreme Court for a final decision. And with the Court stacked in heavy 6-3 favor to Trump, it won’t be surprising to anyone if they lean to Trump.
The message is clear. Don’t be complacent. My job isn’t to comfort you nor sing you pretty songs so you can sleep at night. My job is to tell you the truth to the best of my ability. And the truth is Trump has better than a fool’s chance to get re-elected, and if it means we all lose a little sleep between now and November seeing that he isn’t, then so be it.
For another thing, we also have Nate Silver to worry about. Nathaniel Read Silver is a statistician and writer for ABC News. He analyzes baseball and elections. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight.
He also has this to say about the Electoral College: if Joe Biden wins the popular vote by less than one percent, he only has a 6% chance of becoming president. You read that right. Joe Biden can win the election and his chances of becoming president are nothing short of awful. We can thank the Electoral College for that little piece of perversion.
If Biden wins the popular vote by one to two percent, he’s got a 22% chance of becoming president. If he wins by two to three percent, he’s got a 46% chance of becoming president.
That last one is particularly chilling to me. It tells me that if Joe Biden wins by four million votes, that is, more than a million more popular votes than Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by, Biden has worse than an even chance of becoming president of the United States.
These are two reasons why we have to turn out in record numbers and leave positively no doubt that Donald Trump has been defeated. And we must overcome two mighty adversaries, the Electoral College and, in the event of a close contest, the Supreme Court. The obdurate forces of darkness are arrayed against us, and we are the last defenders of truth. We must not fail. We cannot afford to fail.
So vote. Do everything in your power to get others to vote with you. Contact friends, man the phone banks, go door to door, do what you must. The future of Democracy and the survival of our species is literally in our hands. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.