Great news! The presidential primaries are done until 2020! Not only that, Bernie Sanders probably won’t be getting the Democratic nomination, so I get to make fun of everyone else. Unless Hillary Clinton decides at the last minute to drop out and pursue a career in high-stakes competitive ikebana.
I want to avoid either endorsing or exorcising candidates. I’ve always been told I had a pass, because I’m officially speaking only for myself here, but I like that stick-to-issues, stay-off-candidates practice. So, here’s an issue: What could happen on Nov. 8?
I mean, what are the possibilities left? I want to know what could conceivably happen, in case I’d need to duck.
Recently I made a bet with my supervisor, Jerred “Please Don’t Be Hurtful” Clouse, that if Clinton won the Democratic nomination, Trump would win the presidency. This bet was entered into right after I suggested that possibility and he said, loudly, “No way!” I said, “Uh-uh! Way, sucker.” That’s the kind of possibility I’m talking about.
Our Founding Director Timothy “I’m The Founding Director” Harris has said that he is sure Washington will go Democratic, “as always,” so he can vote any which way and the state will still go to Clinton. Tim may not be aware that Washington state voted Republican considerably often prior to his arrival here.
In fact, from 1952 through the Ronald Reagan years, Washington state went Republican seven times out of nine, only voting for Johnson in ’64 and Humphrey in ’68. We didn’t even help Kennedy or Carter win.
Add that and the fact that so many voters in the caucuses were for Bernie and so many of those said they had never participated in a presidential election before now, and you have a recipe for a repeat of 1980, when even though Carter was favored here, he lost the state to Reagan. The popular vote among those who bothered to vote at all was 49.6 percent, 37.3 percent, 10.6 percent, and 2.5 percent, respectively, for Reagan, Carter, John Anderson, and a blend of a libertarian and assorted Disney characters. It didn’t matter that Reagan got less than 50 percent of votes cast. He won all the electors.
What are some other possibilities we can be aware of?
There was this one thing that I thought of right away when Clinton clinched the nomination one day after the Associated Press lied and said she already did. Remember how when we elected Obama, racism ended? Wasn’t that great? We don’t have racism now. Well, if the country elects Clinton, sexism will be dead history, in just the same way.
On the other tiny little hands, we could instead vote Trump in, and from then on we will remember 2016 as the year that bullies finally got their way, and people stopped looking down on them.
While if we elect Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who is currently on the ballot in 20 states and the District of Columbia (so it could so happen!) it will finally put an end to that silly saying about pigs flying. Pigs will all get their pilot licenses that day, and those people who say that will just have to shut it.
One thing I was surprised to learn is it’s not a possibility that a Bernie write-in campaign could lead to his election. At least it’s not possible as things stand. About 20 percent of the states never count write-ins. Another 60 percent require the candidate to register as a write-in candidate. If Bernie doesn’t register, any write-in votes for him won’t get counted in those states. And it doesn’t look like he will do that. Not enough states will count them for him to win in the Electoral College.
This election so far reminds me most of the 2000 election. If this one comes down to Florida or Pennsylvania and hanging chads or this year’s equivalent of hanging chads, a possibility is that the end of the 2000 election will start to play out. It would go to the Supreme Court. Which would probably deadlock, 4/4.
Which would lead to a nightmare congressional process and give us one last reason to thank Obama before racism starts up again.