Post-Election Rally

November 6, 2024: the "fifth-best one-day showing ever"

The stock market rocketed higher over Donald Trump's clear-cut victory last night. [bold added]

Wall Street has rarely been more excited by an election.

U.S. stocks’ capitalization rose by $1.62 trillion on Wednesday, their fifth-best one-day showing ever, following Donald Trump’s decisive election victory. The surge highlights the opportunity that investors, bankers and others in finance are hoping to embrace over four years of tax cuts, deregulation and economic expansion.

While all sectors benefited, investors were particularly enthusiastic about the possibility of a lenient antitrust regime and a less stringent regulatory environment:

Dealmakers expect mergers and acquisitions to come roaring back, with the installation of business-friendly regulators replacing those backed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), a noted dealmaking foe. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were among the strongest performers on Wednesday; those firms are among the most deal-oriented....

Among the biggest beneficiaries of a Trump administration are U.S. banks, a group that has been under regulatory scrutiny that is likely to ease in the next four years.

Bank stocks surged Wednesday in a wager that a strong economy, increased dealmaking and lighter regulation will spur higher profits. Some of the firms that have been under the most pressure from their overseers during the Biden administration surged. Wells Fargo jumped 13% to a new high. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley both rose more than 10%.

IMHO, the stock market is moving too fast. Staffing key positions will not happen immediately, plus senior and mid-level positions are filled with bureaucrats who not only do not support but actively resist Mr. Trump's policies, as we saw during his first term. I won't be a buyer for at least several weeks.

Voting in Person on Tuesday

2020 election: plenty of space

Foster City tore down its Recreational Center in the month before today's election. The timing was unfortunate, in that the spacious Rec Center was Foster City's sole in-person voting location. (The City began planning the $66 million construction project in 2017.)

Signs directed us to a room in City Hall, next to the fire station. The room was packed with voting booths; about half were occupied.

A volunteer asked me to "register"--she quickly corrected the phrase to "check in"--and I filled out a form with my name, residential address, and date of birth.

Another lady checked the information against her computer (no identification was requested), and directed me to an empty station.

I made my selections on the touchscreen, printed out the ballot, and dropped it into the box. The whole process took half an hour.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't have minded taking another minute to show a picture ID, but California is unlikely to reinstate that requirement in my lifetime.

I'll Have Some News With Those Jokes

Tyrus gesticulates

On the eve of an election which is again the-most-important-election-in-my-lifetime I'm tuning out all the reporting on the polls. Predictions range from a late break toward Harris to a clear-cut Trump victory. The most common poll result seems to be a statistical tie.

This week I've been watching Gutfield, Fox's late-night humor show. Tonight there was this nugget.

George "Tyrus" Murdoch: You are from the mean streets of Northern California.

Greg Gutfield: San Mateo.

Tyrus: You didn't play.

Gutfield: I cut my teeth at the Hillsdale Mall.

Tonight I learned that Greg Gutfield, like Tom Brady, Kris Kristofferson, and Merv Griffin, is another San Mateo kid who moved away and hit it big.

It's a pleasant surprise when you go to be entertained and pick up some knowledge in the process.

Pain Avoidance

For the record I do think that Kamala Harris won tonight's debate with Donald Trump because she looked "more Presidential" than he did. Regarding the content, I keep up with enough political news to know that each debater made claims about the other that were false, but I wasn't the target audience, which presumably was the low-information undecided voter.

Cheryl Obermiller in Missouri, and Jonathan Chiaramonte in New York.
Both started politics-free Facebook groups. (WSJ photo)

However, one should not demean the latter by assuming they're unintelligent. They could be rationally avoiding politics because they can't stand the vitriol. [bold added]

Some Americans are avoiding [politics] at all costs.

They are canceling subscriptions, deleting apps, silencing notifications and unfollowing rabble-rousers. Many want no part of Tuesday night’s presidential debate or its fallout. Political discourse has infiltrated everything from the Sunday church service to afternoon football, and they have had enough.

Even those with firm political views say they feign ignorance rather than join impassioned discussions. It isn’t, they say, that they are uninterested or uncaring about world events, but they are inundated by the sheer volume of news headlines. Deciding it is bad for their mental health, they are retreating or seeking apolitical havens.

Cheryl’s Amazingly Positive, No Politics Allowed, Interesting People Group, with 11,600 members, is one. “Not only do I not care who you voted for, in this group you aren’t allowed to tell me,” wrote creator Cheryl Obermiller, 66 years old, welcoming “fellow snowflakes” to post photos of flowers, funny road signs and tasteful jokes.

Obermiller, who founded the group after friends engaged in political flame wars, said, “Things are so contentious right now that people are just starving for a place they can go where someone doesn’t have to know who I am going to vote for.” She helps monitor comments, a time-consuming task for the Kansas City, Mo., construction-services firm owner with eight children and 21 grandchildren.

About 62% of U.S. adults say they are worn out by so much coverage of the campaign and candidates, according to the Pew Research Center, which surveyed 8,709 adults in April...

Politics is a chronic stressor and disengaging is among the most effective coping methods, said Brett Q. Ford, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. Ford and a colleague tracked hundreds of Americans in recent years and found political events often triggered negative emotions that left people exhausted...

Jonathan Chiaramonte, a 43-year-old high-school teacher, in 2020 started a politics-free community Facebook group in Sayville, N.Y., where he lives. Chiaramonte, who teaches a peer-education class that promotes community, confidence and eradicating bullying, noticed adults in town behaved worse than his students when it came to political discourse. “It was so upsetting to see my neighbors fighting,” he recalled.

Today, the Sayville Politics-Free Zone has 3,000 members in a town of about 17,000. He said people know they can share or seek information without any spin or political blowback. He once used the forum while redoing his kitchen. “I was looking for a contractor,” he said, “not for a lecture on politics.”

Count me in the feigning-ignorance crowd. Stress harms one's mental and physical health. Our jobs, finances, and family problems are stressors enough, and voluntarily seeking more in political discussions seems crazy to your humble blogger.

I'll do my civic duty, cast my vote in person in November, then move on.

California Not-so-Forever

Aerial rendering from California Forever (SFGate)

California Forever's plans to build a utopian city in Solano County have suffered a setback. The group pulled its November ballot measure: [bold added]

that measure, if passed, would have removed some zoning restrictions that prevent this type of development in the area.

California Forever will instead "submit an application for a General Plan & Zoning Amendment and proceed with the normal County process which includes preparation of a full Environmental Impact Report and the negotiation and execution of Development Agreement,” Solano County Board of Supervisors Chair Mitch Mashburn said in a statement Monday.

The news was celebrated by many in Solano County, where skepticism about the project ran deep. The group’s secretive purchases of huge tracts of land first brought about national security fears, even from local politicians, who had no idea who was behind the project. When the plan to build a futuristic city was announced, California Forever faced widespread pushback, ranging from concerns about billionaire backers like Reid Hoffman and Laurene Powell Jobs to questions about the impacts on traffic, water usage and proximity to Travis Air Force Base.

Almost every Californian involved in a construction project groans under the entanglement of red tape, and the billionaire investor group is no exception.

Reid Hoffman and Laurene Powell Jobs are ardent supporters of the Democratic Party--most recently they have pledged support to Kamala Harris' Presidential run--implying that they want to spread California's Progressive principles to the rest of the country.

However, when it comes to their business, they can't stand living under those strictures either.

Debate Surprise

(Variety photo)

I fell asleep before the debate started. (I'm ten years younger than President Biden and start fading in the early evening, so I give him credit--and President Trump, 78, too--for putting themselves out there at 9 p.m. Eastern.)

Waking after the debate, I flipped between MSNBC, Fox, and CNN expecting to get the usual commentary from partisans about how their candidate won. For the first time in memory there was very little spin from one side, which acknowledged that their candidate did poorly.

Instead we were treated to some Democrats calling for President Biden to drop out of the race. The biggest obstacle is the President himself.

President Biden’s halting performance against Donald Trump left the Democratic Party in turmoil, with allies ranging from lawmakers to wealthy donors discussing Friday whether the 81-year-old should remain on the ticket even as a defiant Biden pressed on with his re-election campaign.

The 90-minute debate, watched by tens of millions of Americans, put Biden’s age, his biggest political vulnerability, on display like no other moment in his presidency. He stumbled over words, stammered through answers and trailed off without finishing sentences, forcing Democrats to publicly confront an issue that many had largely dismissed and some had fretted over privately.

Biden has no plans to drop out of the race, according to one of his senior advisers, and the president remains committed to the planned September debate with Trump. He returned to the campaign trail Friday, acknowledging his age but insisting he remained the right man to take on Trump....

Biden would need to step aside from the race in order for Democrats to replace him, given that he controls most of the party’s delegates headed into their August convention.

I had thought that the biggest pre-convention news was going to be on the Republican side, with former President Trump's hush-money sentencing on July 11th and the designation of his running mate. To almost everyone's surprise the Democratic convention could well be more entertaining.

Primary Election Day

Foster City Library

I did my civic duty and cast my ballot in person earlier today at the Foster City library.

There were a limited number of offices to vote on, and only one proposition, Proposition 1, a $6.4 billion bond to build mental health treatment facilities and housing for the homeless. I voted "no" on Prop. 1, not because I don't want to spend money on mental health and/or the homeless but because I have little faith that the monies will actually help the intended recipients. They'll probably be diverted to consultants, planners, government agencies, and non-profits. We've been fooled before: in 2014 Californians approved a $7.5 billion bond measure to build more water storage; ten years later not one reservoir has been built.

The U.S. Senate race I also found interesting because of the way in which Democrat Adam Schiff "picked his opponent," Republican Steve Garvey. In California the top two vote getters in the primaries face off in the general election, and Adam Schiff ran ads that warned against Steve Garvey's conservatism, boosting the latter's profile amongst Republicans and some independents. A Democrat like Katie Porter would have likely proved a tougher opponent in November. If one is a fan of political strategy, one has to give credit where it's due.

Storm Coming

On Tuesday morning we awoke to an unusual sound, the steady patter of rain on the roof. Water poured from the downspout onto the yard, collecting in spots where the ground had hardened.

The wet weather should continue:

Low-lying parts of Bay Area — including Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose — could receive 1 to 1.5 inches of rain from late Sunday night through Wednesday, while the coastal ranges could get up to 3 inches of fresh precipitation, according to the National Weather Service. To the east, areas of the Sierra above 4,000 feet can expect one to four feet of snow...

I will perform my civic duty later today by voting in person at the recreation center. Does the inclement weather make me regret not mailing in the ballot? No, in fact, the (slightly) increased difficulty raises its esteem, IMHO.

Meanwhile, there's a storm coming.

The Education of San Francisco Leaders

Prohibited states in red (local news matters)

Beginning in 2016 the City of San Francisco refused to do business with--or allow its workers to travel to--states that don't comply with its views on LGBTQ, abortion, and voting rights.

The SF Board of Supervisors now realizes that governance through its idiosyncratic moral stances has only hurt itself. They asked the City Administrator to reconsider. [bold added]

“By prohibiting the City from doing business with half the nation, this policy has resulted in significant administrative costs and potentially far more significant contracting costs by limiting bidder competition,” the Tuesday letter said, adding that it is “also unclear if this policy has been effective in changing the policy-making choices of states subject to” the city’s ban.

Progressivism and wokeness will never be completely extinguished in San Francisco, but it's encouraging that San Francisco is willing to pull the plug on some policies that obviously aren't working.

True Colors

Giselle Hale (Chron photo)

Giselle Hale is dropping out of the race for Assemblyman due to vicious attack ads that have distressed her young family. No, the attacks are not coming from Republicans but from the campaign of Diane Papan, her only opponent and a fellow Democrat.

Hale, the mayor of Redwood City and a progressive Democrat, shocked California political observers with the decision. In June, Hale just narrowly secured the second spot on the ballot to run for the 21st District Assembly seat in the Nov. 8 election.

Her race against Diane Papan, deputy mayor of San Mateo, was expected to be one of the most contentious Democrat-on-Democrat contests for the Legislature this fall. Now, Papan is all but guaranteed to be the next Assembly member to represent the district, which includes San Mateo County and several affluent Silicon Valley suburbs south of San Francisco.

Diane Papan

Papan finished first in the June primary, with 41% of the vote. Hale narrowly edged out Republican Mark Gilham for second place, with 19.8% of the vote, compared with 19.5% for Gilham...

Hale said she faced the “full force” of a roughly $1.2 million negative ad campaign, including mailers that showed up in her mailbox almost daily. One ad criticized her for auditioning for “The Apprentice,” former President Donald Trump’s old reality TV show. Another criticized her for being registered as a “no party preference” voter in the past.

In a state where the Democratic Party holds all state-wide offices and both houses in the legislature the voters must often choose between two Democrats in the November finals, the consequence of the Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act. For example, in 2016 Kamala Harris (D) defeated Loretta Sanchez (D) when Barbara Boxer retired from the U.S. Senate.

Both Diane Papan and Giselle Hale are white, middle-aged liberal women who are the mayor or deputy mayor of cities in San Mateo County. One might well have thought that their personal and political similarities might have lessened the polarization we see almost everywhere else and resulted in a respectful, even muted campaign.

Sorry to disappoint. When power, wealth, and privilege are at stake, true colors often emerge.

Kansas Surprises

State Capitol - Topeka, Kansas

On Tuesday Kansas voters refused to overturn a state court ruling that found a right to abortion in the Kansas constitution:

One message is that voters are wary of extremes on either side of the abortion issue. A majority of the public supports a right to abortion at least up to several weeks of pregnancy. This is disappointing to those who believe life begins at conception, but it means the pro-life side has persuading to do if it wants to win the abortion debate.

That’s the burden of democracy, which is what the Supreme Court allowed to return on abortion in overturning Roe. Urging Congress to pass a national abortion ban, as some on the right want, looks like a certain loser—in addition to likely being unconstitutional. Abortion is an issue for the states to decide.

The reason that the outcome was surprising to most is that Kansas is "a culturally conservative state with 350,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats." The pro-abortion results were not surprising to this humble observer, however.

As I wrote in May:

State and local governance, aka federalism, is indeed messy and inefficient. Abortion-rights supporters seem to dread having to argue a case, in 34 jurisdictions no less, that they thought they had already won, but I suspect they'll find it easier than feared.

Everyone has had to wrestle with the meaning of fetal life for 49 years, and IMHO the majority across the United States has decided that it is less important than the health of a mother.

Perhaps it will dawn on both sides that the overturning of Roe was not an unmitigated defeat for abortion rights or a clearcut victory for the anti-abortion side. Where one Party rules, like in California, one side doesn't have to listen to the other, but in most States they will have to. Compromises will be reached, and, finally, maybe, after half a century temperatures will cool:

abortion never really went away after Roe; we won't like the heat for the next 3-5 years, but maybe things will cool off after legislators pass or reaffirm laws post-Dobbs, the people react, and the laws are adjusted again.

Chronicle Editorial Board: Spinning for Progressives

The Chronicle is feeling what he's feeling.

We're used to reading editorials where writers cherry-pick facts, misrepresent the positions of opponents, and warn of apocalypse if their advice isn't followed.

But at least major newspapers don't make up facts that are foundational to an argument, or so we thought until we read the Chronicle's take on Chesa Boudin's recall (yesterday's post below). [bold added]

Editorial: No, California didn’t just send a message on crime — only voter apathy

Voter turnout was barely at 26% in San Francisco the morning after the election. It was even worse across most of the state. Sure, ballots will continue trickling in for days. But the story will stay the same.

Voters weren’t “desperate for change,” as one Los Angeles Times website headline put it. They couldn’t be bothered...

But it was apathy and resignation, not overt anger or a definitive vision, that ruled the day in San Francisco and across California in Tuesday’s election.

But is the Chronicle correct about voter apathy being high?

In an election-analysis article, the same newspaper says that the turnout to recall Chesa Boudin was higher than in 2019, when he was elected.

Unlike Tuesday’s election, which ended up being largely about a single candidate, the 2019 election asked voters to cast their ballots for the mayor, D.A., city attorney, public defender, sheriff and several other races in the year before a presidential election...the Department of Elections is now anticipating turnout among registered voters to hit 46% — higher than the 42% rate seen in the 2019 election, and a lot higher than the 36% rate for the February school board recall.

As of this writing 123,926 votes have been counted, and 74,335 (59.98%) of them were to oust Chesa Boudin.

When all the mail-in votes are finally tabulated, the total is expected to be above 200,000.

The same chart for 2019 shows that Chesa Boudin was elected because he received 68,575 votes (35.71%) out of 192,053, the leader out of four candidates through "ranked choice" voting.

With only 57% of the 2022 ballots counted, there are already more "no" votes against Chesa Boudin than voted for him in 2019.

Sounds like the San Francisco electorate is getting less apathetic, but we're not professional interpreters of facts like the Chronicle editorial board.

Two-and-One-Half Years Was Enough

Chesa waved at cars. The voters waved back. (Chron)

When Chesa Boudin was elected to the office of San Francisco District Attorney 2½ years ago, we half-jokingly asked if San Francisco was headed in the same direction as Caracas.

Since then his Progressive policies have failed so miserably in the eyes of San Francisco voters that they weren't willing to wait until November, 2023 but removed him from office in yesterday's recall election.

San Francisco voters overwhelmingly voted to remove District Attorney Chesa Boudin from office on Tuesday, favoring a recall effort that argued his progressive reforms were too lenient and made the city less safe.

Boudin trailed by about 20 percentage points Tuesday evening, according to the latest figures from city elections officials. Around 60% of San Franciscans who cast ballots voted to recall him...

Boudin was part of a wave of progressive prosecutors who took power in American cities, channelling the energy of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Boudin eliminated cash bail, which favors wealthier defendants; helped divert more defendants to treatment instead of trials; and pursued criminal prosecutions against nine police officers.

As expected, the Boudin campaign blamed Republicans. Even the San Francisco Chronicle was incredulous:

Boudin blamed the recall on conservative forces, pointing to the fundraising against him, but only 7% of voters register as Republican in San Francisco. Rather, he split Democrats in a city where many residents are frustrated with chronic problems, including high rates of burglary and drug overdoses.

Some of the recall team’s most vocal advocates were Democrats, who said they believed in Boudin’s overarching goals but said his leadership had created an office in disarray and a system that let offenders off without meaningful consequences.

Since the rest of us in the Bay Area had to accept Chesa Boudin's 2019 election, we tried to make the best of it by satisfying our curiosity about "anti-carceral" policies. Would devoting more funds to mental health, substance abuse, and homelessness reduce crime?

Each side tried to show statistics in their favor, but the public perception was that there was an explosion in lawlessness across the board.

As for your humble blogger, the 18-year-old Toyota Camry has become less reliable. I'm looking forward not having to drive it whenever we go into the City.

As I Perused the Voter Information Guide

Going through the CA Voter Information Guide, I came across this gem (right) of a statement from a gubernatorial candidate who I never heard of.

Should I reward such juvenile expression with a click to her website? Yes.

Mariana Dawson has an interesting grab bag of policies, both left (rent freeze, student loan relief, nuclear-free California) and right (reinstate death penalty, pro gun rights, anti-Critical Race Theory).

In a May 27th announcement she announced that she's no longer a candidate:

I'm officially ending my campaign for the 2022 Governor's race, and refocusing on running next year in a recall election.

We're exiting this race because my main signature gatherer went rogue and demanded I support the Republican party.

I refused.

“F all politicians” includes their political parties, whether it’s the Democratic Party or Republican Party. I want no part of their political civil war.

Elsewhere on her website she says she's not a millionaire, and she's not taking donations. You may have observed that she's expecting a recall election next year, at which point she'll run for governor!

Well, first impressions can be wrong. She's far from the worst candidate we've ever seen.

Note: this is an example of why I don't do early voting. Late-breaking developments, such as a candidate's withdrawal, could change one's decision. I'll head down to the Recreation Center and cast my ballot this afternoon.

Justice Breyer to Retire

(WSJ photo)

Justice Stephen Breyer will retire, according to NBC News:

Justice Stephen Breyer will step down from the Supreme Court at the end of the current term, according to people familiar with his thinking...

Biden promised on the campaign trail to nominate a Black woman to the court. In the wake of Breyer’s announcement, there was an outpouring of statements calling for him to follow through.

The progressive group Demand Justice hired a truck last year to drive around Washington with the sign: "Breyer Retire. It’s time for a Black woman Supreme Court justice."

Justice Breyer, 83, has yet to make an official announcement.

The current SC term ends in late June or early July.

Although only a simple majority in the Senate is necessary to confirm a future nominee, the Democrats won't have any room for error. Digging through a nominee's personal life back to her high school days is now an acceptable practice, and any behavioral or verbal misstep will be grist for the hearings. Depending on what turns up, Senators may have difficulty justifying their vote to their constituents, especially if they're up for re-election in 2022.

In any case, replacing a Supreme Court nominee increases the likelihood of nothing important getting through Congress in 2022.

Voting Like the Good Old Days

As expected, Governor Newsom survived the recall vote; in fact it was a landslide in his favor.

With more than 8 million votes tallied, the recall campaign was capturing only a third of them. Millions of Californians had already cast their votes ahead of election day, after officials mailed a ballot to every active registered voter in the state last month, allowing county election offices to process their ballots ahead of time and begin releasing results shortly after voting concluded at 8 p.m.

A few notes about voting at the recreation center, which was the only in-person voting place in Foster City yesterday:

The line moved very slowly.

The staff made us fill out an identification form that contained our name, mailing address, and date of birth.

They re-entered the information on a computer screen and checked to see whether it matched County records, after which they handed us a paper ballot.

Not once throughout the process did they ask for a photo ID. It was my observation that an average of 5 minutes per person was wasted on filling out the form and re-entering and verifying on the computer. In contrast photo ID's were required for vaccinations, where the lines moved quickly.

There were no voting machines. We inscribed our choices in blue or black ink on little ovals on the paper ballots, which were then dropped into the slot of a big orange box. Just like the good old days.

There were two big orange boxes; the other was off screen to the right.

The Recall: Cost and Benefit

The official materials received on today's recall vote describe all the ways we can cast our ballot.

Unless I'm out-of-town or sick, I like to vote in person on Election Day (regarding today's recall vote I suppose it's "un-election" day). Going to the polling location is inefficient compared to mailing in the ballot, but many people prefer inefficient activities like attending church services, sporting events, movies, concerts, and shopping. Perhaps we derive meaning from memories of past engagements, and the emotional experience is worth the temporal cost.

Another reason to vote in person is to allow time for late-breaking data to inform one's decision, especially if one is on the fence. Your humble blogger is ambivalent on the recall: on the one hand I've never liked Gavin Newsom since the stunt he pulled as Mayor of San Francisco in 2004, on the other, I regard California's recall provision as wasteful--the Governor should be allowed four years to implement his policies, and if he does engage in egregiously bad behavior ("misconduct") he can be impeached and removed by the State Assembly and Senate..

The ballot is simple, consisting of only two boxes to be checked off: 1) Shall Gavin Newsom be recalled (removed) from the office of Governor? (Yes/No); and 2) Candidates to succeed Gavin Newsom as Governor if he is recalled, Vote for One (46 named candidates, plus a box for writing in a candidate).

As the materials in the above picture may indicate, it's harder to understand the voting process (vote by mail, drop boxes, in-person, made more confusing by the different dates these methods will be set up) than the thing we are voting on.

I'll go down to the polling place, and decide what I'm going to do there. Not that it will matter--all the polls say that Gavin Newsom is heavily favored to beat the recall. Despite the inefficiency and the unimportance of my vote, the emotional experience is worth the temporal cost.

Blogger in Chief

Does he input the old-fashioned way? (Vice photo)

If you missed ex-President Trump's unique communicative style, you can now read his blog. The latest post:

Warmonger Liz Cheney, who has virtually no support left in the Great State of Wyoming, continues to unknowingly and foolishly say that there was no Election Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election when in fact, the evidence, including no Legislative approvals as demanded by the U.S. Constitution, shows the exact opposite.

Had Mike Pence referred the information on six states (only need two) back to State Legislatures, and had gutless and clueless MINORITY Leader Mitch McConnell (he blew two seats in Georgia that should have never been lost) fought to expose all of the corruption that was presented at the time, with more found since, we would have had a far different Presidential result, and our Country would not be turning into a socialist nightmare! Never give up!

Father and daughter in 2016 (AP News)

His blog doesn't allow comments, and the traffic is orders of magnitude less than his Twitter postings. Less traffic, however, doesn't mean he's been ignored. The WSJ editorial page responded to his attack on Liz Cheney:

The better part of political prudence would be for Ms. Cheney to ignore Mr. Trump. But Mr. Trump won’t ignore her. He issued four statements on Monday and three of the four were attacks on fellow Republicans, including one on Ms. Cheney. She may be ousted because she is daring to tell the truth to GOP voters—and at personal political risk...

Republicans will look foolish, or worse, to swing voters if they refight 2020 in 2022. They can truthfully say that Democrats used lawsuits to exploit the pandemic to change the election rules in some states. They can also say Democratic judges on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court let Democrats get away with it. Democrats did a better job of exploiting the pandemic election rules than did the GOP.

But there’s no evidence any of this was decisive, as Mr. Trump lost the popular vote in a rout and the Electoral College by a similar margin to what he won in 2016. Mr. Trump lost even as Republicans gained 12 seats in the House. The election was close, but not as close as others in American history.

We haven't even seen the text of the Biden Administration's tax and spending proposals, and we're already talking about the 2022 elections. Let's focus on this year; let's see the draft proposals, the responses from the public, and what happens in Congress.

Let's see whether President Biden's mental faculties continue to deteriorate---I hope he stays healthy--and whether that affects the political calculus of not only 2022 but 2021. Or maybe international events will become paramount, and President Biden's actions will affect whether his domestic legislation gets passed.

Meanwhile, the Democrats were right to complain about the weaknesses of election systems in 2016, and ex-President Trump is right to complain about them in 2020. But that election is over. Let's implement a Sarbanes-Oxley Act for elections to root out the potential for fraud.

We sometimes forget that one of the foundational principles of democracy is that the losers accept the result because they trust the process. That trust is near tatters, but it can be restored by demonstrating to everyone, clearly and transparently, that cheating can't turn an election.

Fixing these systems will restore trust in future elections, and maybe we'll begin trusting each other again.

Reckoning Time

The odds are against it, but this week's Time cover has the potential to be as memorable as the famous "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline on the November 3, 1948 Chicago Daily Tribune.

If President Trump succeeds in his challenges to the validity of the vote count in certain states, he could still become the next President.

Time's unqualified declaration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as President-Elect and Vice-President-Elect would become in retrospect the high water mark of fake news, and the masks on the two individuals will be seen to have multiple meanings.

It will become a cover that rivals Dewey Defeats Truman.

My base expectation is that there will be proof of the existence of fraudulent Biden-Harris ballots, but there will not be proof, just suspicions, that there exist enough of them to overturn the election. Joe Biden is still a heavy favorite to be the next President, and everyone should make their plans accordingly.

However, these suspicions will be enough to poison the discourse of the body politic for months, even years.

I wonder if Time and other news organizations will have the courage to investigate how ballots were counted in the major cities of swing states after President Biden is inaugurated. The fact that the stories by Time and other news organizations on November 4th said that the claims of fraud were "debunked" when the claims were still being prepared is not encouraging.

There will be a terrible reckoning---we don't know when or in what form---but both the guilty and innocent will suffer. Hey, it's Sunday, it's time to use Biblical language.

Vaccine--Coming, Elections--Wait and See

In what may be the most important news of the past week--and that's saying something--the stock market averages increased sharply this morning after the announcement that a vaccine with greater than 90% effectiveness has been developed and that it could be distributed as early as this month.

A vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. PFE +11.87% and partner BioNTech SE proved better than expected at protecting people from Covid-19 in a pivotal study, a milestone in the hunt for shots that can stop the global pandemic.

The vaccine proved to be more than 90% effective in the first 94 subjects who were infected by the new coronavirus and developed at least one symptom, the companies said Monday.

As of 10 a.m. EST the indexes are up 8% over the past week. The travel and leisure cohort, especially the airlines, are seeing 20% pops. Meanwhile, the stay-at-home winners (Zoom, Netflix) fell back this morning.

Some commentators (WSJ, Yahoo News) also attribute today's bounce to the consensus forming around a Biden victory. IMHO, that's only a small factor because the recounts and legal battles have another month to go. While Mr. Biden is likely to prevail, some reports of fraud from cities in battleground states do seem worthy of investigation, so we'll wait and see.