I usually don’t post political stuff to my Facebook, as I have a large number of international musician friends (we play a tapping guitar called a “Chapman Stick” and talk about it and rock it out amongst ourselves about it). My international friends are often more interested and vocal about our politics than many American musicians, who often have diverse audiences and try to appear relatively “neutral” to most politics. And because of my job and the Hatch Act, I also can’t talk about politics during the election season during working hours, and have avoided it mostly on social media. But since the Hatch Act releases me from discussing politics now that the election is over (and deliberately not putting scare quotes around “over”), and seeing the flood of “I see dead people voting in Detroit” memes from my friends and family here in Michigan, I had to make a post about the political math we’re all living through now, and that some of us are in denial about. Here’s the post. (It’s not publicly shared, but reprinted below. I slightly formatted it, but not very well. Been a while since I published a diary. Yoroshiku.)
Political Math Post (don't read if math makes you cry). The Hatch Act now lets me have an opinion about math and express it.
Bush V Gore in 2000 came down to 547 votes in Florida, and just one case that went to the Supreme Court, who ordered the recount to be stopped in Bush's favor. One state, one case, a long national nightmare.
Now in 2020: There is not a single pending case in the courts that can possibly change the election. The cases are 0 won and 10 lost so far. There's not a single state in question that's closer than 10,000 or more votes. And there's Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona, most run by the GOP, that all show that Biden won. Recounts MIGHT change the total by 300-500 votes at most, historically. Did the Senators and Congressmen that won their seats for the GOP while their states went for Biden win their seats illegally? Should they step down if Biden didn't win it?
Did the Georgia GOP somehow cheat for Biden? Did GOP-run Arizona cheat for Biden? Wisconsin, mostly-GOP run, as well? And after all that voter suppression to make sure that everyone voting had IDs and was properly registered? The GOP tried so hard to limit the number of blacks voting, and they controlled the entire voting apparatuses of most of the close states. Yet, they somehow "cheated" for the other side by counting more votes for Biden and their own candidates, but not Mr. Trump? Wouldn't it be more likely that people split their ticket, and Republicans voted for their guy or gal but voted out Mr. Trump? THAT's what we're calling an election conspiracy, largely run by the GOP against themselves? (Some might call it "voting" and then "counting the votes.")
50 states and their secretaries of State were interviewed by the NY Times this week. All 50 states reported a smooth election and no known incidents of intentional fraud. All 50 states.
And ALL of that "voting by dead people" fake-news crap has been debunked. It didn't happen in Philly; it didn't happen in Detroit. I see your funny memes about dead people voting, and they're completely wrong. It did not happen and not one single instance of wide-spread voter fraud (or even narrow-spread) has been found. Put up or (politely) shut up! If you see dead people voting, show us one! And then come up with 5 million more or so, because that is the popular vote margin so far and we haven't even finished counting. 5 million!
So, man up, recognize the math, concede and work on your 2024 campaign. And let's all stop trying to not hurt the feelings of a President and his campaign that told us for four years to F our Feelings, snowflakes, and get over it, because the math is the math.
Biden won 306 electoral votes, which is ironically what Trump won in 2016, and has called the "biggest landslide in history" for four years. You don't have to like that. But it is the math.