Introduction
Math is hard, but only for some. Math doesn’t care about your feelings, and math feels free to mess with anyone’s deluded opinions as much as it wants to. I am speaking here of “math,” but being a math bigot from the old school, I hasten to add that I was referring of course to something called honest math.
As a consequence, so long as it is honest, we ought not to care if the math is emotionally difficult for somebody, or anybody for that matter. If the math is difficult for someone who lives in Trumpville, so be it. If the math is hard for someone in Biden Town, so be it. Math is hard-hearted.
Okay then, let’s sit down, everybody, and do the math . . .
Hey! why are all the dignified and responsible voices behaving like a cohort of college students, seated there behind the basket during a championship final, yelling and waving their team scarves during a critical free throw shot?
I have alluded a number of times in my earlier posts to the need for actual evidence, curated honestly and presented in an accessible way. That evidence is now here. This election must not be decided on blogs (even a blog so august as that one) or in the media. But this kind of evidence should be able to generate enough attention that it raises public awareness of what is happening, such that the actual evidence itself can be brought before courts, or before the states that have to certify the results of the election for their state.
Given all these circumstances, the president would be out of his mind to concede anything just yet. Being submissive to the dictates of honest math as I am, I can easily envision a situation where he should concede the election, but that situation is not this one. That time has not yet come. That particular circumstance has not yet landed on our heliport.
I do not say this as a Trump voter. If I had voted this time the same way I did in 2016, I would be just as dismayed at what is going on. We should all care more about not turning into a banana republic than we do about which guy’s picture is on the stamps of the banana republic.
So Trump should concede if and when it is evident that he lost the election, fair and square. The same standard applies to Biden. He should concede also, and under the same circumstances.
My reasons below have to do with how we read the story, with how we read the narrative. A close reading of the evidence has to happen within the story, but it is also important to back out and look at the big picture as well. So after you have worked through the details of “Every Legal Vote,” linked above, I suggest you come back here for the broader context.
So having said all this by way of background, here are my seven reasons why the president should not concede anything right now:
Media in the Tank [1]
It is useless to tell me that all the momentum in the media is settling into the conviction that Biden won, and that we should all just deal with it. I mean, look at the cover of Time . . . But to have this race in effect “declared” by the most distrusted institution in America is not the way forward.
The public trusts the media less than they trust Congress, and that is down in single digit territory, and that means that we shouldn’t let them have anything to do with determining what is and is not an acceptable opinion on the question of voter fraud.
There is a vast difference between losing an important election and believing you have been cheated out of an important election. Republicans were certainly disappointed over the fact that Obama was elected twice. I remember well the weight of how tedious it all felt. But this is different. There is already enough evidence out there to convince 70 million Trump voters that the situation really needs to be looked at by honest brokers. The media are not that. If you want Republicans to accept their loss with a good grace, this is something they have shown they know how to do. But you are not going to get that result by blowing sunshine at them.
These are reasonable questions. These are sane questions. These are responsible questions. These are lucid questions. These are intelligent questions. That being the case, I certainly do not want to be told by the people who spent weeks burying the Hunter Biden story that I am the one imagining things. Nor do I appreciate it when the people at Fox who disgraced themselves in a spectacular suicide (Arizona early! Texas late!) look at me and my questions with a supercilious eye and a patronizing smile.
These are good questions. So answer the questions.
What My Net Don’t Catch Ain’t Fish [2]
We have been told that there is no credible evidence of widespread cheating, and we have been told this while Big Tech are shutting down venues for publishing claims of cheating.
Suppose a man claimed that a nearby pond did not contain any fish that were smaller than one inch across. As he ventured to prove this to me, he dragged the pond with a net, the squares of which were all exactly one inch across. When he came and dumped his collection of fat fish in front of me, somewhat triumphantly I might add, I thought to point out that the smaller fish, which I maintained were still living safely in the pond, could easily swim through the holes in his net. But then he answered, as though it ought to have floored me, that “what my net don’t catch ain’t fish.”
“There are no credible reports of voter fraud.” “Well, how about this one?” Facebook has determined that your post violates your terms of service . . .
In short, our self-appointed censors are demanding that the public see what they won’t let us show.
Why Would They Stop? [3]
We are looking at this election as though someone needs to come up with a reason why the Democrats would suddenly start cheating. But remember the last four years? Anybody? We actually would require a reason for thinking they would stop cheating. They started cheating on the 2020 election the moment they started cheating, after the fact, on the 2016 election. The only reason they didn’t cheat in 2016 during the actual voting itself is that they weren’t ready to. They weren’t ready because their necks were full of hubris. They thought they would take it in a cakewalk against Donald “Ha ha” Trump. When they lost, it caught them completely flat-footed. They had to scramble, and scramble they did.
Remember the new threshold levels that we have established on how to define election interference? You remember how those Russians Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale bought a couple of Facebook ads? This tricksy action threw our democracy into crisis mode, resulting in the whole Russian collusion saga, a manifestation of how corrupt our intelligence agencies have become, a special prosecutor blowing through millions in his version of the hunting of the snark, with the whole thing clambering up to the carved gargoyle of the impeachment FARCE. So if Facebook ads constitute ELECTION INTERFERENCE (!!!!!!!!??), with those punctuation marks within the parentheses indicating shouts of excited disbelief plus two what the hecks?, then maybe we should consider the possibility that domestic spying on political opponents, months of rioting, threats of more rioting if the election didn’t go their way, and all the rest of their screaming monkey nonsense, might rise to that same level.
You know, I offer this as an a fortiori argument. If some Russian Facebook buys get you to the screaming monkey levels, what levels do the Trump voters have a right to?
Does Anyone Really Doubt? [4]
Work with me on an “if” here. I am not saying this is going to happen. It seems like an uphill climb to me, but I want to use a hypothetical. If the apparent election results are reversed, if it turns out that Trump does have credible evidence of widespread cheating, and he turns out to have been elected for a second term, what would we have then?
We would have one election where both sides were thought to be, in some fashion for some period of time, the loser. We will also be able to compare, side by side, the responses of both sides to that loss for their guy.
But does anyone really doubt whether there will be riots if Biden is denied? And during the time when the vast majority of Trump’s supporters thought he had lost, were there any riots? There have been no Trump riots thus far. We don’t even know where to find the pallets of bricks that George Soros dropped off. We are not up to speed on any of this.
What does this tell you?
Suppose I am playing chess with a guy who threatens me with bodily harm if he loses. What does this tell me about his investment in the dictates of fair play? Suppose after the third time that I say check, he runs and gets the fire extinguisher and hoses down the board, making further play impossible.
What’s New and What’s Not [5]
As long as our republic has been a republic, and as long as our politics have been, you know, politics, dirty deeds have been going down. That part is nothing new. Here is an example from one of our cities in question, albeit not from this election. What Patrick Henry famously said about the constitutional convention held in that same city — “I smell a rat” — is a sentiment that has been appropriate and fitting many times and on many occasions.
What is different here now is how many people are staring at it while it is happening.
When my father was a boy, major league baseball only had one umpire. That meant that when there was a fly ball to the outfield, he had to run out from behind the plate to see what was happening in the outfield. And there was one ball player back in the day who, whenever he was on first and this happened, would make free to skip going to second base. He would just run from first to third. The one person in the stadium who did not see him do this was the umpire. Everybody else saw it, and could yell about it all they wanted. It helped to make the commentary from the stands a little more zesty.
That kind of situation here would be . . . untenable.
A Second Humiliation [6]
If Trump has credible evidence of cheating, then he has the right and the responsibility to produce that evidence in a court of law. If the vote margins were narrow enough to warrant recounts, he has every right to those recounts. In the Bush/Gore showdown in Florida years ago, while Gore didn’t have every right to the tactics and arguments he used, he did have a right to the time and the process.
For reasons stated above, the early indications are that the Trump team has substantive evidence for their case on voter fraud. It seems to me that they have probable cause. But there is an additional reason. If they don’t have substantial evidence, then Trump is for some reason insisting on arranging for a second humiliating defeat, and all within a month or so. The first would be losing the election fair and square, and the second would be to show up in court with nothing, after alleging in a loud voice that “he was robbed.”
Zoom Out Just a Little Bit More [7]
Conservative Republicans who are not Trump fans have every incentive to want Trump to exhaust every legal remedy in challenging the outcome of this election. Here is why.
If Trump lost this election fair and square, then there is at least the argument that the people did not want what he was selling. He might not run again. But if the people did want what he was selling, and there is a widespread perception that he was robbed, what does that do to the Republican primaries three years from now? I will tell you. It will make Trump the automatic front runner in them.
Put another way, if Trump is reelected for four more years, that means the “Trump era” in Republican politics would tally up to eight contiguous years. But if he is removed under these dubious circumstances, without adequate answers to all the questions raised, then the people who orchestrated that brilliant move may well have made the Trump era into a twelve year one.
Tell me. Is Trump the kind of man who might run again for purposes of personal vindication? Why yes, yes he is. And that is the “bright side” scenario.
What is the dark side scenario? If Biden is inaugurated, he will be swallowed up by the ravenous left in pretty short order, and the left will demand blood. They are already making “enemy lists.” Does anybody seriously think there will be no proposals or demands that Trump be prosecuted? For something? For anything? And if that happens, this is why we have expressions like Katie, bar the door.
If Biden is inaugurated, the hard left will be in charge. And the hard left has no understanding of the word restraint. If Biden tries to pull any of that “malice toward none” stuff, he will be frogmarched to the door, or locked in a closet, and Trump will have to move to South Dakota in order to fight extradition.
It will not be pretty.