[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
As Nate Silver publishes the odds of Vice President Biden winning the popular vote yet still losing the presidency Vice President Biden and Senator Harris should very well remember the stinging fear, anger and bewilderment among our people that after all the frantic work to win 2020 we could still in fact lose—because we won.
After the 2000 debacle it was assumed so blithely and so very conveniently that the electoral college failure was a rare one-off, a quirk from the 19th century. Now we know that was a disastrous mistake, leaving the busted rigged game sitting there delivered us Donald Trump. None of our people worried Obama would win the popular vote yet still lose in 2008, but oh my god that fear and anxiety runs rampant through the Democratic Party right now.
In my last piece on democracy mechanics of course the electoral college fix was at the top of the list, the baton since picked up by journalists Chris Hayes and Paul Waldman. Although all of us hammered the urgent point home for a fix we kindly left something out of the electoral college failure issue.
When Vice President Biden and Senator Harris take power in 2021 and if in fact blithely move on with no mention or effort for an electoral college fix they’ll be seen as collaborators to the status quo, the busted rigged system delivered us Bush and Trump. A total fascistic horror show we may never recover from, but that’s all right with you?
The obnoxious, stupid claim that the Republicans and Democrats are really alike and don’t offer a choice truly will work this time, if both parties can accept this beyond-ridiculous gross affront to democracy, fairness and honesty—such a pillar to everything we are, a good election—then it really is true, Vice President Biden and Senator Harris have just been playing a cruel lying game all this time, just like the Republicans.
Vice President Biden and Senator Harris are giving me dagger looks of fierce impatience now with this thought: look, dude, we can’t do anything or talk about it unless we have the votes!
Yes ma’am. Yessir, I understand completely. The discussion here is predicated upon the Democrats winning the Senate—and then getting rid of the filibuster. You can read the Senate polling as well as I can, victory upon present course seems very likely, so this is valid real political thinking.
I’ve got some more real bad news for you, Vice President Biden and Senator Harris, the filibuster issue puts you into the same vicious hammering lock the electoral college issue fix will, just let it sit there and you will amply demonstrate all the incredible change we must go through really isn’t there, all the pain and smashed promise of our little people just a joke to you, you must be just like the Republicans. Sorry!
[opens hands] You wanted the job—go have a chat with Gavin Newsom, who got pandemic, power failure and raging wildfires his first year. I have watched 40 years of Republican Party ascension and crash, Vice President Biden and Senator Harris, their time is so over. To truly move and embrace the new Democratic Party era will require a mindset we must drastically change, 2021 will be a very crucial year of frenetic work and driving will.
Should it somehow be undertaken as just another political whistle in another year of the Republic yet again there is more bad news, the Democratic activist base will roast you alive for it and likely rip the Party apart. As with the electoral college and filibuster there just is no option, go all out for real change or totally fail, the country and Party will not stand for it.
I’m sure Vice President Biden and Senator Harris have been grimly amused as some grossly obnoxious Republican morons lately possessed the actual gall to dictate to Mr. Biden a Sistah Souljah move on the Democratic base, since Democratic victory is so likely it’s time for the Democrat to screw his base and prove to the country he’s a moderate, it’s a center-right country and liberalism isn’t tolerated.
[chuckles] In 2021 triangulating the Democratic Party base will be as dead as the filibuster and the electoral college. The Democrats will be in complete control and we won’t have to make excuses for being good liberals, junking the filibuster or fixing the electoral college.
