Biden/Trump – an Election Redux
Over a leg of lamb during the Christmas holiday, Lionel Shriver, joined 5 or so expats for dinner. Ms. Shriver happily reenacts the celebration: Thanks to her Spectator column, she is the “only one allowed a voice at the table” for the dramatization. It’s a wordsmith’s version of “He Who Has the Gold.”
An Election Redo of 2020
Among topics that came up at the festive table? Will the losers of the 6 November 2024 elation accept the results as legitimate? With indignation, Ms. Shriver asks, who would “pose the greater threat to American civic order — the left’s or the right’s?”
The invasion of the Capitol was an ugly business and carried enormous symbolic weight.
As “insurrections” go, this one was pathetic; if you’re seriously intending to overthrow the US government, you don’t dress up in cow horns and raccoon tails. (Fun fact: after serving 27 months in prison, the infamous “QAnon shaman” has got a haircut, put on a shirt and repented; he’s now running for Congress in Arizona.)
“They” Have All the Guns
Guns? In a few dismal respects, the U.S. is still a free country. Last I checked, you didn’t have to be a registered Republican to buy firearms. Lethal violence is a few hundred bucks away from everybody.
Should Donald Trump keep leading in the polls, especially in swing states, I wonder if Democratic apparatchiks won’t manufacture a last-minute “health emergency” in the White House, even if they have to bash Joe Biden physically over the head — thereby necessitating a hasty presidential switcheroo on the ballot. But for now, let’s assume our current president defies all rational medical expectation and remains upright. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court invalidates any clumsy, bad-look judicial attempts to keep Trump from running at all. So we’re looking at a car-crash redo of 2020.
Ms Shriver was outnumbered at her Christmas dinner. But she giddily notes, because of her column, she gets to win the argument. Taking a page from the Left, no dissenting voices allowed here.
Maybe it’s up for grabs whether Biden or Trump would be better for the country — or worse, since that’s the real contest.
Election Chicanery
Should Biden pull off re-election, many Trump voters will doubtless claim once more that the election was fixed.
With all the judicial shenanigans of 2023, Democrats have already given Trumpsters reason to suspect hanky-panky in advance.
Thus, I’m certainly leery of Trump’s base if they’re thwarted a second time, when grassroots fury could easily top January 6th. But if Trump wins, the left’s explosion on the streets of American cities could be petrifying.
