There are 8 days until our Democracy will be challenged in a way it never has been in the history of this country. 8 days. In Wisconsin, it’s official today: mail in ballots will not be counted for any ballot not received by the election date. Challenging, given that mail slowdowns are pretty common these days. Limited ballot drop boxes in the Houston, Texas area. Oh, no, not boxes, box. One. Singular, in an area of 2.4 million people. Just kidding. Oh, shit, no, I am not.
So, yes, a lot of breath holding in my house. (We’re Democrats, in case you haven’t guessed.) Also, if you hadn’t guessed, that’s just plain weird. It also suggests you haven’t read the “Caution” section of my blog. My “Caution” section is much shorter than other fine print. It’s only a little bit like the thirty pages of fine print most of us don’t read when we go on Facebook, Twitter, health insurance, etc. You know, the thing where you signed away your first-born? Fortunately for you, “they” are slow in coming to get your first born, and by the time they do, the kid’s a teenager. The fine print people take one look at your teen (under the guise of you being someone potentially important to your kid, like an iPhone salesperson), watch them text and tweet for countless hours and decide, “Hell, no. What would we want with that kid?” (There are a few rare exceptions when they capitalize on the teen’s skills in breaking FBI codes. Nobody knows how often that happens, and your son or daughter is back from the FBI code they cracked within minutes. That’s how fast they are. The teen, not “they.”)
I am struck by how very much has been about breathing in the last many months. George Floyd’s murder, and the subsequent rallying cry, “I can’t breathe” used widely in the Black Lives Matter movement. The forest fires and fires raging all through California, Washington, Oregon, and now Colorado. The ash and the air because of the fires.
I know many of us couldn’t breathe during that time. For us, the air was so bad that it impacted people to the point they couldn’t go outside safely, Covid-19 aside. I couldn’t breathe well, either, and I stayed in even more than I was already doing for Covid. (I don’t get out much. High risk population.) For some, the air is still bad because a lot of places are still on fire. Here at ours, it’s beautiful, blue skies and all, or at least that’s how it is right now. Two days ago the air was bad again, so it’s a very refreshing, even joyful, change to see blue skies. I definitely have to go for a walk today so that I can enjoy it even more deeply. Who doesn’t love blue skies? (People who live in LA, maybe? I dunno.)
There has been a lot of breath-holding in the last year, and there is more to come in the weeks ahead. Will Trump lose? If so, will he accept the results? Will he agree to leave the White House, or will he resist? If he does resist, what would that resistance look like? We will have to see. In the meanwhile, we don’t have a lot of choice. We wait. We keep our fingers crossed. We hold our breath.
———————————– Ah, and now it’s eight days later. The election was LAST NIGHT! According to ABC right now (give or take a few minutes) Biden is winning the popular vote. Biden also has 253 electoral college votes. Trump has 214. Trump is setting up legal challenges in the battleground states.Why or how it could even be close after a pandemic president who did not help save people, I cannot begin to understand. Trump lied. He could have taken measures to save us. He didn’t. On November 1, 2020, the United States hit the highest number of Covid cases on any one day: 99,321 recorded on Friday, according to CNN. A tragic number, and a tragic number that will only go up, I’m afraid. Oh, it already has. Even as I write this post, the number of Covid cases continues to rise.
There have been record numbers (74,000) of new Covid cases in one day in the United States. According to CNN, at 9.1 million, the United States has the highest number of Covid-19 cases in the world. In the world. Yet, bizarrely, Trump still has more than a fighting chance to win the Presidency. As of 2:15 on Wednesday, 70,569,901 votes were cast in favor of Biden, while Trump has garnered 67,373,215. It’s close. How it is close is beyond me! I cannot understand; I really can’t.
Next, there will be a legal battle. If Trump loses, he will contest the election, demand recounts in the places and states where he is able. There will be attorneys, courts, stenographers, even the Supreme court. It’s going to get ugly. Ah, the election! Again I hold my breath. With all this breath-holding, my face could turn blue. I don’t mind. In this case, I prefer blue to red.
