Yesterday was the second to last Tuesday before the election or at least what used to be known as Election Day. Now with mail-in and early voting and vast numbers of absentee ballots, millions of Americans have already voted, stretching election day out by a month. Kind of like the way Black Friday is stretching closer to summer each year.
Election Day isn’t when the action will happen in 2020, unless one candidate or the other scores an enormous, insurmountable lead that night.
The real action is going to be two weeks from today, the Day After Election Day.
On the Day After we will be figuring out what comes next.
– Does Biden win some of the must-win states for Trump like Ohio and Florida? If so, it is game over and gun stores across America are going to sell out of everything. EVERYTHING. You think it is bad now, you ain’t seen nothing yet especially if the Democrats take the Senate, which I think it is unlikely but even then there are plenty of squishy RINOs who will vote for gun control.
– Does Trump hold a huge electoral college lead? If Trump wins all of the states he won last time with significant margins and perhaps even a few he didn’t like Minnesota, then things will look grim for the Left at least for the next four years. If this happens, I expect escalating and widespread rioting in urban areas and even some violence in the vicinity of the White House. I think this is the least likely scenario.
– Or what if Trump holds a slim lead but there are lots of “ballots” that keep appearing? At what point do the election results go final and then if they are contested, we could be look at a repeat of Bush-Gore in 2000 and that could end up at the Supreme Court. In this scenario, which is pretty likely, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the decision to push forward in replacing her before the election will be huge. It will also mean that if a contested election comes before the SCOTUS and if they side with Trump and name him the winner, the Left will go completely insane as they will see Trump “stealing” an election with what they consider an illegitimate SCOTUS justice in Amy Coney Barrett. In that case, I think violence is inevitable.
– Finally, if Biden holds very slim leads and has enough electoral college votes to win plus has the “popular vote”, there will be demands for Trump to concede but if things are tight, I can’t see him doing that especially since he has declared he expects cheating. This will also send the Left into a frenzy and again in this scenario we will see widespread violent “protests” and perhaps civil unrest up to attempts to remove Trump from the White House by force. I assume law enforcement and the military are quietly gearing up for the worst case scenarios.
Only the first scenario, Biden winning in a landslide on election night and Trump conceding, has the potential to avoid immediate violence.
Yikes. I have always looked forward to election day, there is something almost sacred and sacramental about it but this year I am kind of dreading it.
This will also send the Left into a frenzy and again in this scenario we will see widespread violent "protests" and perhaps civil unrest up to attempts to remove Trump from the White House by force. I assume law enforcement and the military are quietly gearing up for the worst case scenarios.
Call me pessimistic, but, based on what we've seen in the Summer of Riots already, I kind of suspect that the quiet gear-up of law enforcement is going to consist of scoping out the safest donut shops, as well as preparing jail/morgue space for anyone who simultaneously doesn't look antifa-ish and is caught doing anything other than cringing behind the sofa and waiting to be killed, or worse. And the military's quiet gear-up? Might be gearing up to install biden/HARRIS by force majeure. I'd like to think not, but it wouldn't surprise me any. It's distinctly possible that the cavalry have signed up with the Indians. If they do ride over the hill, we might rather they hadn't.
We're on our own. And, really, we always were. So maybe the silver lining is that it's becoming increasingly clear how things are.
That is the only upside of all of this, that our enemies are finally revealing themselves openly. I think there could be some real problems in the LEO/military, I sell lots of guns to cops and they seem pretty solid but the upper leadership are more Deep State, same in the military.
I hate to monopolize the comments (c'mon, John Wilder, where are you?). But … when the mail came today, there was a card from the Allen County election board, "here's where you can vote, absentee ballots" and so forth. Looked like a blanket mailing that probably went out to everyone with an address. It had the URL for the election board's site. So, I had some queasy curiosity about the status of my own registration. I last voted in … '96? Maybe 2000. Not later than that, for sure. So I assumed I'd been purged from the rolls. Well, they must not purge very often, because I was still registered to vote. Next, I wondered how easy it is to scam the vote-by-mail thing, so I clicked on the absentee ballot button. By then, they already had my name and address, so all I had to provide was an acceptable reason to vote absentee (you can choose from a pulldown menu, one of which is "I am over 65," which is true enough) and my driver's license number. Once I gave that, they claimed they'd mail me a ballot.
Now, I'll have to deal with temptation. I'm still <a href="http://bartlebysfour.blogspot.com/2010/11/rite-of-consent.html>against voting</a>. And I'm not an enthusiast for the feckless Trump. But, as you've written here before, it <b><i>is</i></b> a way of showing the middle finger to the powers that be. I'm on the fence … but I do feel my badfinger wanting to unlimber. Besides, maybe the reason I never get called for jury duty any more is that I don't vote. And, as a retired geezer who knows both the term "jury nullification" and knows not to say it out loud in a courthouse, I would like to get myself on a jury.
I do seriously wonder how many elections you have to sit out before being purged from the voting rolls.
Exactly. Nearly all of the few contacts I've had with ground-level LEO makes me think that those individuals are decent enough citizens, and are more-or-less like-minded with me, albeit in a Team Red kind of way. I'd guess the same applies to the military, although the only such folks I know are veterans from at least a couple of decades ago, which might as well be a millennium, as fast as things go here in the former Land of the Free.
Please excuse an extended comment here, but I'd like to report a bit of a conversation I recently had with one such veteran from "back in the day" — in this case, the Vietnam era. It's deer season, and this guy and I are hunting partners. We're driving out to Kosciusko County the other day, in the predawn darkness, and talking guns and politics, as often comes up. Specifically, we were discussing potential bans and confiscations of "ugly guns" (modern sporting rifles, AR platform) and what might happen if such things are enacted. In case of widespread noncompliance, I expressed my skepticism that either LEO or the military would attempt to go door-to-door, forcibly search, and forcibly take. My friend suggested that I might be right about LEO, especially around here. But soldiers, he said, would follow orders, regardless. Because "that's what they do." What are your thoughts?
Soldiers today seem a lot softer than they were back then, as most young men are in general, and there are a lot of women and homos in the service. Still I think ordering young people to open fire on other Americans won't be an easy sell.
Reporting for duty!!!
If I lived in a big city? I'd completely stay home the next day. As it is, the number of Biden voters within a six mile range couldn't fill a kindergarten classroom.
Avoid crowds.
I read an article the other day about people planning on being out of town on election day, going on vacation or staying with family, whatever they can to be clear of cities. Probably the smart move would be to stay wherever they end up.