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Now … it’s time to look ahead

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Is it too early to start talking about the new government under the command of a new president?

Aww … what the hey! Let’s go for it!

I won’t yet refer to Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president-elect. I will await the outcome of whatever legal challenges that Donald Trump will mount. My sense is that they have no basis, that Biden will be elected in due course and will begin the transition into taking office as the nation’s 46th president.

Trump is seeking to challenge the outcome of a contest that has spilled over past Election Day. We have some votes still to count. Nevada remains “out there.” So does Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina. Biden is within striking distance of the latter three. He could win them, cementing his apparent Electoral College victory.

My initial takeaway from what lies ahead is this: Joe Biden will benefit from a healthy popular vote majority that Donald Trump never had. Trump won the Electoral College in 2016, but lost the actual vote by nearly 3 million ballots. Biden is leading as of this moment by more than 3 million votes and that number is certain to climb.

This dual-track victory will give Biden some political capital he can spend. Trump didn’t have it, even though he acted as if he did when he took office in January 2017. What’s more, Biden is well-versed in the nuts and bolts of legislating whereas Trump never learned how to negotiate with federal legislators.

Biden campaigned to restore the “soul” of a nation ravaged by the chaos and confusion brought to the presidency by Donald Trump. I will await anxiously to see how that restoration will take place. We are, after all, being felled by a pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 of us, which tells me that Joe Biden will accept a heaping issue plate when he takes office next January.

One final thought …

I have resisted attaching the word “President” directly in front of Trump’s name. I make no apologies for that. I am looking forward to referencing the words and deeds of President Joe Biden.

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Don’t do it, Mr. POTUS

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I had hoped a good night’s sleep would refresh me this morning, giving me a chance to look back on what we witnessed last night with a fresh set of eyes and a fresh outlook.

I didn’t get that sleep-filled respite. I awoke this morning around 3; my wife had been up about an hour already.

We watched the presidential election  returns roll in Tuesday night, then went to bed thinking the worst was about to happen … that Donald J. Trump would squeak/slither his way to a second term.

I heard he declared “victory” about 2 a.m. I am glad I was dosing when he did that.

Then, lo and behold, after sitting up for a time during the wee hours with my wife and after going back to the rack for a couple of hours, I found out this morning that Joe Biden took the lead in Wisconsin, that his lead in Nevada was holding, that he then took the lead in Michigan.

If he wins those three states, he gets to 270 electoral votes. He is elected president. He can begin transitioning from private citizen to commander in chief and head of state.

Oh, but wait! Trump likely won’t allow that to happen. He’s going to take this matter to the highest court in the land, with its three justices whom Trump nominated and the Senate confirmed. What in the world is he going to challenge? That the vote counting was done illegally? That someone “rigged” the election to produce a Biden victory? That Martians landed on Earth overnight and voted illegally for the former vice president?

He hasn’t produced a shred of evidence of anything being done illegally.

That brings me to this point, which is that if the Supreme Court’s justices have any sense of honor they will toss whatever complaint Trump brings to them into the crapper and say the allegations are without merit and do not deserve to be heard.

I have this strange belief that the court would do the right thing.

With that I feel a good bit better than I did when I went to bed last night. I now must come to grips with how Donald Trump managed to make this election as close as it has turned out to be.

More on that later.

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It ain’t over

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Well now. This is what serious political drama looks like.

Pundits are comparing this suspense to 2016, when Donald Trump shocked the civilized world by defeating Hillary Clinton to be elected president of the United States.

I liken what we’re going through to 2000, when George W. Bush was elected president through a 5 to 4 U.S. Supreme Court decision to stop the recount of votes in Florida; Bush held a 537-vote lead and then won the state’s electoral votes to become president.

Here’s what might play out as we await the last returns from the 2020 race: Joe Biden has 238 electoral votes in the bank; he needs 270 to win election. If he holds onto his slim leads in Nevada and Wisconsin and then manages to catch Donald Trump in Michigan (which is a distinct possibility), he gets to — drum roll — precisely 270 electoral votes.

Is that the end of it? Hah! Hardly! Trump will challenge the results. There might be a recount in, say, Michigan and Wisconsin. Does Trump ask the SCOTUS to stop the recount if Biden is still ahead?

Well, I harken back to what the great Winston Churchill once said about democracy, and I am paraphrasing it here. He called it the most inefficient, cumbersome system of government ever invented … but the best we could ever have. The democratic process is playing out in real time, folks.

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Is it over … yet?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Good morning, world.

I had hoped to awake to the news of a completed presidential election and the dawning of a new age in Washington, D.C., or perhaps the return to a formerly civil, collegial era in national politics.

Silly me. It didn’t happen, at least not this morning.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump remained locked in a political death match to see who between them gets to 270 electoral votes. Yes, Biden leads the actual vote and has a plurality of Electoral College votes. However, an electoral vote plurality doesn’t put him over the top.

I won’t try to assess how the returns have developed into what we Bidhave at this moment, which is a state of utter confusion and chaos.

Instead, I am going to lament a result that isn’t what I had hoped for or, frankly, expected.

I am not going to despair just yet. Joe Biden can still pick off Wisconsin’s electoral votes; Michigan might still be within reach, along with Nevada.

Still, I want to remind everyone who might have read my words in a few previous blog posts that I wasn’t going to declare a Joe Biden election to be a certainty, given Donald Trump’s hocus pocus victory in 2016.

Yes, it was my hope to awaken this morning to welcome a President-elect Biden.

Maybe tomorrow, or the next day or the day after that. Maybe …

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Consumed by returns

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am trying to find something about which to write on this blog.

I can’t get there. My mind is consumed by the presidential election returns that are trickling in.

Yes, the world is full of topics that deserve comment on this blog. They’ll just have to wait for another day.

As for the election, there is next to nothing to say at this moment, or perhaps even the next moment, until we have some clearer notion on who wins this contest.

You know already that I want Joe Biden to win. I am going to wring my hands now, grit my teeth and wait along with the rest of the world for the returns to tell us something we need to know.

My anxiety had been replaced by serenity. Anxiety has returned.

In full force.

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Waiting, waiting, waiting …

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Back when I worked full time for newspapers, this was the night we all cherished and perhaps even dreaded.

Election Night would bring us into our newsroom; I would be stationed in the editorial page office. Our reporters were spread out, manning phones or in the field covering election returns from polling places, or from campaign headquarters.

I generally would await election results and then prepare a next-day editorial commenting on the news of the day, which dealt with who won or who lost. We would try to offer a modicum of perspective, even as events were unfolding in real time in front of us.

I no longer do that. I sit at home. My wife and I are watching news shows that are telling us all we need to know, and even all we might not want to hear.

However, nights like this remind me of the thrill that came with reporting and commenting on issues, seeking to put it into context and to ensure we deliver the next day as complete a package of news reports and commentary as we could to thousands of folks who actually — in the old days — used to depend on their daily newspaper to inform them.

The old days are gone forever. However, my interest in politics and policy remains quite strong. I no longer attend newspaper vigils awaiting election returns. I do retain a serious interest in what those returns mean to the community where I live and to the nation I love.

This year certainly has heightened that interest, elevating to a level I cannot recall since, oh, the first time I got to vote for president in 1972. I was a youngster then, full of pi** and vinegar. These days I am so much older and decidedly less, um, zealous.

The interest remains high. But I’ll leave the deadline pressure of getting the news out on time to the youngsters. Have at it, gang. I’ll pick my newspaper off the driveway in the morning.

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Serenity replaces anxiety

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am feeling a strange sense of serenity … which has overtaken the anxiety I expressed in an earlier blog post.

The world is awaiting the closing of those East Coast polling locations in anticipation of a presidential election many folks are calling the “most important in our lifetime.”

If you’re an old man like me, that’s really saying something. Indeed, the Joe Biden-Donald Trump matchup is, to borrow a term, really yuuuge.

Damn near every pundit this side of Nostradamus is predicting a Biden victory over the Voter Suppressor in Chief, Donald J. Trump.

Then again …

We heard much of the same thing four years ago when “President” Hillary Clinton was supposed to bury Trump. She didn’t. We got stuck with the carnival barker who for four years has been masquerading as president of the United States.

I should be anxious. Oddly, though, I am not. I am serene. I am happy that it’s almost over. I want Biden to win. I want Trump to lose bigly and then to concede — even if he does so in a typically boorish Trumpian manner.

Here is the thing,  though. Even if it goes badly tonight at the tippy top of the ballot, we still might get a Congress that is controlled fully by the loyal opposition. That means Donald Trump will be unable to perform any legislative hocus pocus, as if he even has a clue on how to do anything that involves actual governance.

Until then, I remain cautiously optimistic we are in for a landmark election decision that returns civility, compassion, empathy and smart government to the White House.

I’ll see you on the other side.

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Dial it back, partisans

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The partisan juices are flowing on this Election Day.

We’re going to elect a president and a whole lot of other officeholders up and down the ballot. This morning I had an encounter with a Democratic partisan who, I hasten to add, needs to dial back her political fervor more than just a little bit.

She was wearing a Biden-Harris shirt while sitting in front of First Baptist Church in Princeton, Texas, one of Collin County’s many polling locations. I was there to snap a picture for KETR-FM public radio. I told my new acquaintance I had voted already but was there to take a picture.

After I whispered to her that I had voted for her guy for president, she informed me of the “need” to “elect more Democrats to the City Council and the school board.”

Huh? Eh? What? I reminded her immediately that council and school board members serve as non-partisan public servants. They aren’t affiliated with either the Democratic or Republican parties. She said she knows that, but added that a school board candidate wants to “ban masks” in schools, meaning that the individual is clearly a Republican. No, no, no, I said. We cannot push partisan politics onto non-partisan governing bodies, I admonished her.

Well, I guess that encounter exemplifies the partisan fervor that has hit a fever pitch.

Election Day will come and go. We’ll awaken in the morning to another sunny day. I hope we have a new president waiting to take office. As for the Princeton City Council and the Princeton Independent School District Board of Trustees and their political composition … let’s not inject partisanship into those races. Those folks are in office to the public’s business without regard to which party they might belong.

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Anxiety settles in

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

We have arrived at Election Eve 2020.

I am about to tell you what I am feeling at this moment. I am feeling as anxious and as downright giddy as I did when I voted for the very first time for president of the United States.

That was in 1972. The contest between President Richard Nixon and Sen. George McGovern didn’t turn out the way I wanted. You know how it went: Nixon won a 49-state landslide.

I was not quite 23 years of age then. The voting age had been set at 18 in 1971 with ratification of the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, so I was ineligible to vote in 1968. Instead, I was inducted into the U.S. Army and spent some time in Vietnam in 1969.

I came home in 1970 confused about the Vietnam War. The 1972 election featured two men with vastly different views on matters of war and peace. President Nixon vowed to stay the course and continue a gradual withdrawal; Sen. McGovern wanted to pull out immediately. I sided with McGovern, given my own confusion about the war.

I was giddy then because I did not foresee the drubbing my candidate would suffer. However, casting my first vote for president was a big deal for me then.

Here we are in the present day. Casting my most recent vote for president feels every bit as big now as it did then. The reasons differ.

I was horrified four years ago by the election of Donald Trump. I am hopeful in the extreme that I can be part of what I hope is a serious course correction. Without that correction, I fear for the direction that Trump might drag this nation. I voted with extreme enthusiasm for Joe Biden.

The nation needs to rescue itself from the mistake it made when it allowed Trump to score a fluky Electoral College victory. You know the saying, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

Oh, man, my hope on Election Eve is that we won’t shame ourselves a second time. I am anxious tonight. I also am hoping I can get a good night’s sleep.

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‘Fire Fauci?’ Really?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump considers himself to be a serious man.

I consider him to be a buffoon, a blowhard and a know-nothing politician.

So, when he eggs on a rally crowd that starts yelling “Fire Fauci!” and then urges them to wait until “after the election,” I am convinced beyond a doubt that Trump is out of his vacuous mind.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infection disease expert, had the temerity to declare that the nation is in a poor position as it seeks to battle the coronavirus pandemic. Oh, and then he said Joe Biden is taking the right approach to fighting the disease, while Trump is taking the wrong tack.

The Trumpkins started the chant. Trump listened to them for a few moments, then urged them to wait until after the election … presuming he gets re-elected. Then he might cut Fauci loose.

I have been saying for some time now that Fauci needs the platform to tell us the truth about the coronavirus. I no longer listen to anything that flies out of Trump’s mouth. He doesn’t know whether to sh** or shine his shoes regarding the pandemic. Fauci, on the other hand, is the pre-eminent infectious disease expert on Earth.

Here we are. On the cusp of an election. Trump hasn’t offered us a clue on where he wants to lead us in a second presidential term. He has now resorted to taunting one of the world’s most serious men over his views on the mishandling of a disease that has killed more than 230,000 Americans.

Disgraceful.

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