The People Versus Donald Trump: A Majority Want Him Gone

As the vote tally currently stands, 4.38 million more Americans want Trump gone than those who continue to drink up his lies and savor his divisiveness.  I honestly do not comprehend how anyone moral and decent could vote for Trump with greed among the wealthy or racism and/or religious extremism being the only apparent motivations to vote for a pathological liar and self-admitted serial molester. Trump is the antithesis of true family values and facing down a loss that his fragile ego cannot comprehend, Trump is underscoring his unfitness for the office he has tragically held.  During his regime - reign in his mind, I suspect - America has been diminished both in the eyes of millions of Americans and in the eyes of the world. Indeed, internationally only America's enemies and would be or real dictators seem to hold Trump in any positive regard, although even there he may be playing the role of useful idiot to their machinations.  We need him gone so that hopefully a national rebuilding can proceed and perhaps the nation can regain some semblance of unity.  A column in the New York Times looks at where America finds itself:

To see that child-man charlatan in the White House spouting lies yet again, asserting without a trace of evidence that “If you count the legal vote I easily win,” claiming that “I won Pennsylvania by a lot,” and Michigan and Georgia, too, was to be reminded of the American nightmare of these past four years that the American people seem to have brought to an end.

It was a nightmare in which truth died, decency was trampled, science was flouted, division was fanned and the American idea was desecrated, as President Trump wheedled his way into the minds of every American with an insidious cascade of self-obsessed posturing and manipulative untruth.

In a democracy, a beautiful idea for which so much blood has been shed over the centuries, every vote is counted and each vote counts. That is what happened in 2016, when President Trump won Michigan by 0.2 percentage points, Pennsylvania by 0.7 and Wisconsin by 0.8. What goes around comes around. The difference in 2020 is that the child-man cannot accept his treat being snatched away.

As I write, it appears that Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States.

There may be recounts. There will be legal challenges. But Trump’s attempted coup against democracy, for it is no less than that, will be resisted. The United States is far bigger than this little man.

Trump’s arguments, which in fact reflect no more than the hysteria of a narcissist for whom the phrase “You’re fired!” is unbearable. He cannot seem to distinguish between voting after the election, which would be illegal, and the process of receiving and counting votes cast in a timely manner. Or rather, he can make that distinction, but only when it comes to Arizona, where he hopes the ballots still being counted will reverse Biden’s lead.

Trump has another mental problem. He cannot, it seems, distinguish between a snapshot of a moment — when, for example, he was ahead of Biden by several hundred thousand votes in Georgia and Pennsylvania on election night — and the eventual result after all votes are counted. He keeps bleating that he “won”

Such desperation — the antics of the sandbox transposed to the Oval Office — is excruciating to watch, not least because it is so predictable.

Throughout his life, when in a tight corner, having stiffed his contractors or ushered his businesses to the brink of bankruptcy, Trump has responded with lawsuits, lies and threats. His method was simple: attack, attack, attack. It often worked. But until now, he has not faced the will of the American people in the opposing corner.

Now it is Biden’s moment, on the eve of his 78th birthday. The moment of a man with a deep respect for America’s institutions, its alliances and the rule of law. The moment of a man who reached out to all Americans during the campaign. The moment of a man who became the Democratic nominee as people turned to safe hands to confront the coronavirus and now, it seems, will be asked to heal a wounded nation. The moment of a man who came to a gift for empathy through the devastating loss of his first wife and two of his four children. The moment of an American who understands that you cannot sculpt from rotten wood, and so every democracy requires the foundation of truth.

Trump’s last-ditch incitement of his vast tribe — composed of tens of millions of Americans — will cast a shadow across an eventual Biden presidency. The battles of today will not quickly abate. But the restoration of sanity to the highest office in the land is the prerequisite for the rebuilding that must now begin.

I think now particularly of Georgia, where a Biden victory would be the first by a Democratic candidate in almost three decades. With its large African-American population, and its sharp division between diverse, fast-growing Metro Atlanta and a mainly white conservative hinterland, Georgia was a bellwether of a changing America reeling from a pandemic and racial tension.

Democracy is messy but stubborn. It is the system that best enshrines the human desire to be free. This massive American vote has been many things — bitter and ugly among them — but above all, it has been a beautiful testament to the power of each, single ballot in the world’s oldest democracy.