Tag Archives: Electoral College

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Let the game begin in the Senate … ridiculous

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Josh Hawley has just tossed his hat into a mythical ring signifying a campaign for Dipsh** of the Year in the U.S. Senate.

Hawley is a freshman Missouri Republican who has announced his intention to challenge President-elect Biden’s victory in the just completed election. Hawley’s intention is to force a debate on whether there is widespread voter fraud, the kind of bogus allegation that Donald Trump has been making, that resulted in Biden’s election as the next president of the United States.

Hawley plans to object to the Electoral College certification of Biden’s clear and decisive — and honest — victory.

Hawley vows to challenge Biden electors, forcing vote McConnell hoped to avoid (msn.com)

The idiotic display won’t change the outcome. It merely delays the Senate ratification of the electoral vote tally until after senators and House members have a debate.

What in the hell they plan to debate is beyond me.

Hawley’s grandstanding move comes in direct defiance of what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has implored of his fellow GOP caucus members. However, it plays straight into the wheelhouse of Donald Trump — the Dipsh** in Chief — who is seeking to obstruct the president-elect’s smooth transition into the presidency.

Way to go … senator! You, young man, are an idiot!

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Do your duty, Mr. VPOTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Vice President Mike Pence has one more critical job awaiting him before he leaves office.

He is scheduled — but not required — to preside over a joint session of Congress which on Jan. 6 is going to receive the Electoral College certified tally of the presidential election. It will tally up the votes cast by the electors and then Pence, according to custom, will declare that Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris have been elected president and vice president of the United States of America.

What does the VP do?

That’s easy from my vantage point. He presides over the outcome and makes the declaration on behalf of Congress and the Electoral College.

He is likely, though, to wonder if that’s the correct choice. Of course it is! However, he is likely then to incur the wrath of the man Biden defeated, Donald J. Trump, who continues to bully fellow Republicans to continue resisting the obvious outcome of the election. Trump is seeking to cling to power.

He has lined up a number of GOP loony birds who have swallowed the swill he is serving, that he actually won. To their great credit, some Rs in Congress are urging Trump to give up the fight.

One prominent Republican happens to be Mike Pence, who on Jan. 6 had better do what he must do. If he cannot make the declaration we all intend to hear, he should stand down, step aside and let the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, make the call.

A small, but growing, part of me believes that VP Mike Pence will be AWOL when the moment arrives.

national news

Tuberville making an a** of himself

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

U.S. Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville, the Alabama Republican who exhibited a profound ignorance of government while campaigning for the office to which he was elected, seeks to make a dubious spectacle of himself even before he takes his seat in the next Congress.

Tuberville couldn’t identify the three branches of the federal government but managed to get elected this year because he is a Republican in a deeply Republican state. Now he wants to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the presidential election.

Tuberville is hinting broadly that he intends to challenge the result when Congress meets Jan. 6 to ratify the Electoral College’s certification of Biden’s clear and decisive victory.

Good news, though. Senate Republicans are resisting Tuberville’s goofy notion that the election is illegitimate because of phony allegations of voter fraud.

He has joined another Alabama nut job, Rep. Mo Brooks, in challenging the results. If they succeed, the House and Senate will have to stage two-hour debates before deciding to do what they must, which is to declare President-elect Biden the winner.

We are being disserved by this kind of idiocy in the halls of our elected Congress.

 

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Turning the page already

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Just as President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. urged us earlier this week to “turn the page,” I am happy to report that I am beginning that process already in my own head and heart.

Biden’s comment came after the Electoral College certified his victory on Nov. 3 over Donald J. Trump. The states’ electors gathered in their respective capitals and cast their votes. Biden got 306 electoral votes; Trump earned 232 of them.

Game over. No more challenges to file. No more court battles to wage. No more insistence that the election was “rigged.”

It’s time to turn the page, as the next president urged us.

I have said already that I intend to look more toward the future than to the past. That doesn’t mean I will ignore the rants coming from Donald Trump. It means only that my focus will be more toward what I hope will be a fresh start with the incoming presidential administration.

I am turning the page. Perhaps it’s a bit slow to turn, but it’s turning. Time to move on and for the new president to get to work. Joe Biden has quite a bit of damage to repair.

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Another political custom might face a stern test

(AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A lot of political eyes are set to turn toward someone who’s been stone-cold silent while Donald Trump has ranted about alleged “corruption” in the process that elected Joe Biden as president of the United States.

That someone is Vice President Mike Pence.

The Electoral College has voted to certify President-elect Biden’s election. Now we get to watch Congress ratify it on Jan. 6. There might be a Trumpster in the crowd of House members and senators who will object. The individual who could preside over it all is VP Pence. It’s been customary for the vice president to declare the election of the next president and vice president.

Donald Trump remains adamant that he — not Biden — won the election. What does the VP think? I am left to wonder whether Pence will follow Trump’s reprehensible behavior and refuse to show up.

I will harken back to 2001. We had just completed an election that ended up being decided in the Supreme Court, which voted 5 to 4 to end the counting of ballots in Florida. When the count ended, Texas Gov. George W. Bush led Vice President Al Gore by 537 votes, out of more than 5 million cast. Bush won Florida’s electoral votes, giving him 271 of them to be elected president. Was the then-VP angry? Uh, yeah. He was.

However, he conceded to the new president and when Congress convened to ratify the Electoral College tally, Vice President Gore was present to preside over the event and declared that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would take office as president and vice president, respectively.

That was the statesmanlike behavior we have come to expect in our nation’s top political leadership. We have seen nothing approaching it from Donald Trump. I hope with all sincerity that Mike Pence is a better man than the president.

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Way to go, Mitch … hah!

(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The temptation surfaced but it was a fleeting moment.

I was tempted to offer a “better late than never” congratulatory statement to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for finally recognizing that his former colleague, Joe Biden, is the president-elect of the United States. McConnell this morning congratulated the president-elect and said he is looking forward to working with him on his agenda.

Then the temptation floated away.

I am left now to heap more shame on the Senate majority leader simply because he did something today he could have done — he should have done — weeks ago.

McConnell knew along with the rest of us that Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the democratic process were damaging to the republic, to the rule of law, to our very governmental foundation. Yet he remained silent … until the Electoral College cast its vote Monday to certify that President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris about to ascend to the pinnacle of power.

So, McConnell hid behind the formality of the vote until it was done and then he came forward this morning to state the obvious.

Sen. McConnell has demonstrated a disgraceful display of cowardice.

But it doesn’t matter what I think. The person whose opinion matters is President-elect Biden. Since he is a better man than many of us I am relatively certain Joe Biden is able to put the hard feelings he might harbor toward his former Senate pal aside and get to work on behalf of the nation he was elected to lead.

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Trump elevates our awareness

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let us be clear headed and focused now on what we must do as a nation.

We have elected a new president and vice president of the United States. Today we witnessed in real time as the Electoral College certified the victory earned by President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Normally, this day would have come and gone and no one would have noticed.

Except that this year, thanks to the shenanigans launched by the man Biden defeated — Donald J. Trump — this constitutional duty came into sharp focus. You know what? That’s a good thing! It is good that Americans who take this process for granted now understand with a good bit more clarity how the framers set up this democratic system of ours.

I detest the shenanigans that Trump has sought to pull off. There has been a significant upside, though, if you consider that Americans are paying a good bit more attention to the democratic process.

Let me be clear on this point, too: The Electoral College actually worked damn well, unlike what happened in 2016 when Trump won the electoral vote majority while losing the actual vote to Hillary Clinton. This year, the president-elect’s Electoral College majority and his actual vote majority seem to mirror each other. I won’t call his victory a “landslide,” even though he rang up the same electoral vote total that Trump did four years ago. His victory, though, is significant.

We watched it play out. We paid attention to it. Under normal conditions, we wouldn’t have celebrated this certification the way many of us are doing. There ain’t anything normal about Donald Trump, which he has demonstrated repeatedly since the moment he became a politician.

So you see? Trump’s antics have produced something constructive: an appreciation of our great democratic process!

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It’s over, Donald … Donald?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Cue the Fat Lady.

She’s the one who sings when the party — or in this case,  the fight to hold onto power — is over.

The Electoral College today cast more than enough votes to elect Joe Biden as the nation’s next president. As I write this brief post, Hawaii has yet to meet, but that state’s four electoral votes will go to the president-elect.

What now for the current president? He says he’ll keep mounting legal challenges. Well, there ain’t any left.

Oh, then there’s this: Attorney General William Barr, about five minutes after President-elect Biden secured enough votes to be elected by the Electoral College, turned his resignation. He’s quitting effective Dec. 23. I am sure he will have a wonderful, joyous Christmas.

I am going to listen for the faint tunes of the Fat Lady. She’s singing in anticipation of the next president taking office.

Oh, yes … she sounds so sweet to me.

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Petulance becomes even more petty

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The longer Donald Trump continues his futile, feckless and reckless attack on the American democratic process the more petty he becomes.

The president of the United States is shrinking before our eyes.

The Electoral College voted today and certified Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the 46th president of the United States. Trump, meanwhile, is tweeting messages about how he has just begun to fight.

For what? For an office that is now officially out of reach?

The U.S. Constitution lays it out there. It is spelled out in the written word. The Electoral College determines who sits in president’s office. It won’t be Donald Trump after Jan. 20.

So the defeated president might continue to bluster and blather about alleged election thievery. It didn’t happen. Deep down in his gut Trump knows it, too.

It’s the  uncertainty of what might await him once he no longer is shielded by the trappings of immense power that seems to be driving this petty petulance.

It’s over, Mr. POTUS. Pack your bags and hit the road … for keeps.

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How will Trump react to the next nail in his political coffin?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

One of the zillions of things I won’t miss when Donald Trump is no longer president is awaiting his reaction to matters involving his political future.

Example: The Electoral College is voting Monday on who will become the next president. Spoiler alert: It won’t be Donald Trump.

No, the Electoral College — as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution — will cast its pledged votes for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who won the presidency on Nov. 3. Biden has rolled up a 7-million vote margin over Trump, winning 306 electoral votes.

The Electoral College, which comprises delegates from all the states, will certify the election Monday.

What does Trump do? How will he react when the Electoral College certifies what everyone on Planet Earth knows what occurred? That remains to be seen and heard. Trump has mounted more than 50 legal challenges. He has lost all but one of them. The latest defeat came when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who sought to get the votes of four states overthrown.

Trump keeps tweeting that he’ll continue fighting to keep his job. He continues to insist the election was “rigged.” He produces no evidence of the scurrilous allegation.

The Electoral College certification would appear to be the final scene in the final act of this ghastly drama. Oh, how I hope that’s the case. However, we are dealing with a lunatic in the body of the man who has lost a presidential election.

Let us stay tuned.