The Forces Coming Together

I want to draw your attention to a piece by Margaret Talev at Axios describing a rather small portion of the hurricane that’s coming our way on election day:

A top Democratic data and analytics firm told “Axios on HBO” it’s highly likely that President Trump will appear to have won — potentially in a landslide — on election night, even if he ultimately loses when all the votes are counted.

She’s considered some of the factors but not all. Let’s dig deeper. Here’s a visual depiction of the scenario described:

Let’s throw out a list of of some of the factors involved:

• Polarization
• Immediate gratification
• COVID-19
• Mail-in voting
• Declining trust in government and politics
• Social media
• The “Dopeler effect”
• The stakes are high

Now I’ll make a few observations, somewhat scattershot. This is not conspiracy-mongering. I’ve already posted about the “wargaming” of the 2020 election which included prominent members of the Democratic National Committee, in which Biden’s failure to concede led to civil war. Hillary Clinton has also openly advocated that Joe Biden not concede under any circumstances.

We are a society accustomed to quick resolutions of problems—immediate gratification. That’s promoted by, among other factors, television. On scripted TV programs an enormous number of problems are solved over the course of an hour. This is reflected in everything from the demonstrations, protests, and riots that have rocked the country for months to plans for a “Green New Deal”. Even the thorniest problems and those least amenable to any actual solution must be solved now.

COVID-19, a reluctance to stand in line at a polling place and crowd into that space with people you don’t know, along with the likely shortage of election workers, has motivated a call for much more mail-in voting. It is likely that mail-in voting will be more widespread in the 2020 election than in any previous presidential election in our history. That will inevitably lead to delays in the final results of the election.

It hasn’t always been that way. Until the invention of the telegraph the final results of presidential elections were generally not known and certified for months after the election. Until the ratification of the 20th amendment in many states voting in presidential elections went on for nearly a month. Delays in announcing results were expected. That has changed.

The “Dopeler effect” is the principle by which nonsense looks sensible to you if it comes to you very fast. And repeatedly. That’s an underlying principle of television advertising not to mention Sesame Street. It is quite well known that social media can maximize impact with updates on an hourly if not minute-to-minute basis.

Need I flesh out how high the stakes are in this election? Ruth Bader Ginsburg can’t hold on forever. She could drop dead at any moment. Should that happen during a second Trump term, the structure of the Supreme Court will change decisively. That’s just one example.

To sum up, unless Joe biden wins a decisive popular and electoral college victory on election night, he is very unlikely to concede. The determination of results and their certification could go on for weeks for the reasons outlined in the linked article. Biden-Harris will undoubtedly insist on counting votes until they are victorious. Trump-Pence will equally undoubtedly seek to shut down the counting.

We’re sitting on a powder keg.