Georgia On His Mind

I can't wait until Trump is out of office, in part because he'll give me less to write about when he's an ex-President.  (I'm dreaming, aren't I?)

It seems that Trump - who's known for never admitting defeat - called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (above) yesterday to pressure him to find a number of votes - 11,780 votes, to be exact - that would overturn the Georgia presidential elections results and tip the state to him instead of President-elect Joe Biden.  Trump even told Raffensperger, a Republican, that his handling of elections in Georgia would be to blame for the outcome of the U.S. Senate runoffs on Tuesday should incumbent David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler lose.  Raffensperger listened calmly, even made a couple of interjections (like to say that the data Trump relied on to prove his rightful win of Georgia are erroneous), and put up with Trump's guff for sixty-two minutes (one minute for every 190 votes in Georgia that Trump feels he was wrongly deprived of) before telling Trump goodbye and hanging up.  Just as calmly.

Unfortunately, this is not likely to change the minds of congressional Republicans who are siding with Trump and demanding recounts in enough states to overturn Biden's victory and concede that Biden will be President.  But it may be enough to have Trump retroactively impeached and convicted in Congress - I have heard that there's some sort of mechanism to allow that - so he can't pull a Grover Cleveland and run for a second nonconsecutive term in 2024.  By the way, Cleveland's first failed bid for a second term in 1888 ended with a popular-vote victory but he lost the electoral vote, giving him the right to run again (and win back the White House) in 1892.

Trump has more in common with the Republican President who served in between Cleveland's two terms, Benjamin Harrison.  They're the only two Presidents who lost the popular vote . . . twice!

Oh yeah, they also were instrumental in the appointments of two inept Postmasters General.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to call the high rate of COVID deaths "fake news."