My Election Day Predictions

All right, everybody, gather round. It’s less than a week before election day. Time for my prediction.

I’ve been writing about the election for months, and now it’s almost over. Here’s what I’m sure is going to happen on election night, 100% guaranteed. If I’m wrong I’ll personally mail you a dollar if I ever get a dollar (and I never have a dollar so you’re out of luck).

1. We’re all going to sit down with our nasty grownup beverages or our carton of ice cream or perfectly legal cannabis to watch the returns, even though we swore to ourselves we wouldn’t watch.

2. As the results from rural counties come in, there will be a “red wave,” sometimes called a “red mirage,” as votes from the less populous rural counties are counted first. Like clockwork, people will refer to this as “Trump winning” even though nobody is “winning” at this point. The winning or losing is going on right now as people cast their votes. After the polls close on Tuesday, there’s already a winner, but we don’t know who it is yet. Think of it like examining the photo finish of a very close sprint.

3. As that wave hits, Trump will declare victory on social media.

4. After that, as the results from more populous urban counties are tallied, the “blue wave” will begin. People will say “Kamala is winning” and “Kamala is gaining ground,” but she’s not. There’s already a winner, and they’re just finding out who.

5. On a state-by-state basis, whichever wave ultimately crests the highest is the winner. This will continue until all votes are counted, and the candidate to get higher than 270 electoral votes is the winner. This is stupid because the electoral college is stupid, but it’s what’s going to happen. The winner of the electoral college might even be the winner of the popular vote.

6. If Trump is the winner, it’s over.

7. If Kamala is the winner, Trump will throw a tantrum and make unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud. He will encourage violence from his supporters. He will sue. Vance, Johnson and the like will back him up loudly. He will try his plan of creating so much chaos that the election is thrown to the House and he wins on 26 states, which was the “secret plan” he was blabbering about at the Madison Square Garden Hate Rally. Or maybe he’ll get the Supreme Court to pull a Bush/Gore. He tried all of that in 2020, after he’d seated the extremist justices who are currently on the court, but in the end, none of his plans worked. They won’t work unless it’s an extremely tight race like Bush versus Gore was. So, at least theoretically, none of these strategies will do anything other than be annoying if he loses in much bigger margins than he did in 2020.

I know this is a terrifying time, but remember: Trump is not president right now.

Biden is. And Biden is an honest man who believes in the institutions of our democracy and has nothing to lose. In 2020, Trump was president. And Trump is four years older than he was in 2020: or twenty years older if you observe the way he looks and acts right now. He’s sundowning. He’s haggard and exhausted. He’s lost that weird goofy wrestling heel charisma he used to have. Trump’s running mate is a doofus with no charisma at all– many more people hate him than hate Trump. And Trump is in severe financial straits, much more so than he ever was. Yes, he’s got billionaires backing him, but have you seen the billionaires lately? They aren’t bright.

That’s what I know will happen.

Now, here’s what I don’t know: I don’t know who will win. I am hopeful that the Democrats will sweep the House, the Senate and the White House. I’d say that the Senate is going to be the most difficult, but it’s nowhere near impossible. I think it’s more likely than not that we win. But there’s no guarantee.

Here’s another thing I do know for sure: whatever happens, I don’t regret doing everything I could to push towards democracy and justice instead of a dictatorship.

That’s what it boils down to for me: democracy or dictatorship. America is not a perfect country; it’s not even terribly good.  But the way to move forward to a better country is not to throw it all  and give in to billionaire oligarchs and their decaying orange puppet. And even if we lose, I gave it my all.

We have one shot at saving everything that’s good about us so we can dig out and work towards a better country. This is our chance. Put your John Hancock on it right now. One last push, and we’ll see what we got for it. The only thing that is unacceptable is cowardice.

And we’ll just see how this works out.