MY PREDICTIONS FOR THE 2020 ELECTION

 

There are those who like to skip to the end of a book to see who dunnit.  For those, I'll put my bottom line prediction here at the top.  I think Biden will win the popular vote and in the Electoral College (293 to 245).   A map of how I think this will play out, by state, is here.  This assumes a narrow Biden victory in both Pennsylvania and Michigan and that Democrats can overcome any shenanigans in North Carolina.  I do not believe they can overcome the governor of Georgia and I think they will lose Florida.

Numerically, that's what I think will happen, and I've taken into account possible voter suppression, in the map above.  As far as what is going to transpire, after the voting, I've been thinking about several scenarios, some unlikely, some terrifying and some in between.

1.  Trump wins.  As with 2016, he loses the popular vote.  But, again, he wins the electoral college.  Democrats concede.  There are spontaneous demonstrations, as there were four years ago, but they are put down by Barr and emboldened local police forces across the country.

2.  There is a legitimate tie 269-269 in the Electoral College. In the end, this is a Trump victory.  What happens in between, I can't foresee.  Probably lawsuits from both sides as well as demonstrations from both sides and some violence.

3.  Biden wins, but by just a little in the Electoral College. Trump and Barr and the Republicans go scorched earth in the courts.  Many Democratic votes are discounted. Some Republican legislatures and/or governors certify slates of electors that are faithless to their states popular vote.  The left and mainstream Democrats go into the streets to protest the theft of the election. Some demonstrations are massive.  Trump signals his followers to rough up demonstrators.  Demonstrators are struck by vehicles in multiple cities.  There are one, two, many Kenoshas.  The police stand aside.  Demonstrations become mass and sustained, with ordinary citizens joining and materially supporting.  Police, feds and some military attack demonstrators in multiple cities.  Calls for a general strike become louder and are heeded in some areas. ......This story might not have a happy ending, since it is dependent on institutions that have not shown themselves to be willing to do the right thing:  The Supreme Court, Congress, the police, the national guard, the army.  ...The worst case scenario is not implausible.  Prison camps used to detain protesters.  Martial law in many areas.  Some governors resisting and not allowing their national guard troops to participate.  Trump nationalizing all national guard.  Daily street fighting between Trump goons, militias etc and an increasingly large, desperate and violent antifa.  Nationwide martial law.  Full on fascism.

4.  Biden wins decisively, with at least 25 electoral votes to spare, as in my prediction at the top.  Trump doesn't concede, but Republican lawsuits fail as the scenarios differ enough in the different states and circuits that the Supreme Court can't get their hands on a decisive case.  Republican politicians start to decide to cut Trump loose.  There is continuing right wing violence and long term terrorism, but Biden is inaugurated.

5.  A Biden blow out.  An actual landslide in the Electoral College.  Even Trump knows he's beat.

I'm writing this the day before the election.  Please vote!  To secure this right, people like C.T. Vivian and John Lewis were beaten.  Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Viola Liuzzo and countless others died.  ...Hopefully, none of us will.  

MY SOLUTION TO THE VIOLENT COP PROBLEM

Police killings of unarmed black men have become so frequent that our reactions are always the same and the result (no justice) is as well.  Once again, we all bemoan racism.  That's half the problem but we can't wait for it to end.  Racism is an attitude.  It is pervasive in society.  It will take many years, if ever, to eradicate.  We need a solution now.  I have one.

The police must obey and enforce the rule of law.  It's that simple.

For most of our history, we have turned a blind eye, or laughed at, police corruption.  The take. The pad.  The list.  We know all these from history, from novels and from movies.  It doesn't have to be that way.  We expect honor and discipline from our military.  Why do we expect less from the police?  They are the direct, most visible link between the people and the state, between the governed and governors.

The police, across the country, expect civilians, be we victim, neighbor, witness or suspect, to provide them with honest information.  The whole truth.  Yet they refer to their own anti-corruption units as the Rat Squad.  When a fellow cop is under suspicion, rather than acting as open, honest, civic, patriotic witnesses, they form the Thin Blue Line.  It's their version of omerta.  And that makes them just another gang.

The amended Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights Through Action to Combat Impunity, submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on 8 February 2005, defines impunity as:
the impossibility, de jure or de facto, of bringing the perpetrators of violations to account – whether in criminal, civil, administrative or disciplinary proceedings – since they are not subject to any inquiry that might lead to their being accused, arrested, tried and, if found guilty, sentenced to appropriate penalties, and to making reparations to their victims.[2

The police in this country are allowed to act with impunity against unarmed black men.  The solution to that is to oust elected officials such as district attorneys, mayors and attorneys general who put the protection of the police above the safety of the community.  That's not as long a term of a solution as ending racism, but it's also not fast enough, nor sure enough.  There is a more direct answer to the problem.

Make the police be police.  They need training and they must lose their jobs and be criminally prosecuted it they fail to follow the rules of their job.  They are the armed presence of the state; they must be held to account.  For years, we have heard, ad nauseum, about police training.  Enough with talk of choke holds!  That just gives lawyers a foothold at trial.  Every police officer must have it ingrained in them that they are criminally responsible if they fail to prevent a fellow officer from committing a violent crime.

In cases like that of George Floyd, the other officers have one job!  Stop the rogue officer from battering or killing an unarmed civilian.  We all know what would transpire if officers happened upon George Floyd, or anyone else, kneeling on the neck of someone yelling for eight minutes that they couldn't breathe.  They would immediately intervene and arrest the attacker.  And if the attacker failed to cease the assault, and if that attacker was armed, we know what they would do.  They would shoot him.

During the Viet Nam war, the most famous atrocity was the My Lai massacre.  American soldiers, led by officers, including Lt. William Calley, murdered hundreds of defenseless women, children and old people.  Most Americans know how the scandal ended, but most don't know what stopped the massacre itself.  It halted because decent American soldiers forced their fellow American soldiers to stop.  Helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson and his crew landed their helicopter between the marauding soldiers and their next victims and explained to them that if they didn't cease firing on the civilians, that they would commence firing...  on them.

That's what will stop this.  That's the training that police need.  Every potential killer cop must have that doubt sown in their head.  That if they threaten the lives of those they are sworn to protect, their fellow officers will shoot them!

LAST THOUGHTS ON MAC MURRAY COLLEGE

As a toddler, we drove past or through MacMurray College, on the way to church.  The MacMurray baseball field was across the street and the Town Brook, from the playground of Franklin School, where I went to kindergarten.  My kindergarten teacher was Sue Jones.  Her husband was the coach of the Mac baseball team, Itchy Jones.  When I came to SIU, Itchy Jones was the baseball coach here, before his career at U of I.
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Starting with first grade, I walked through the MacMurray College campus every day, on the way to Our Saviour grade school, and later Routt High School.  When I was in grade school, I remember being proud of how unique MacMurray was.  While every other high school and college had a football game following their homecoming parade, MacMurray had a soccer game.  This was decades before the sport swept the nation.

MacMurray was home to "the bridge" (linking the north side of campus, with its academic buildings and sports fields, with the dorms, south of the town brook) and the student center, to those in my neighborhood.  We met under the bridge in the morning to smoke cigarettes, and progressed to the student center to drink cokes and play Foosball, years before Foosball tables were ubiquitous in every bar and suburban basement in the country.

When I was in grade school, our lunchtime routine was to burst outside and steal bikes off the rack and take off, before any teachers, or playground moms, knew we were gone.  Then we pedaled as fast as we could to Burger Chef, got sandwiches and drinks and headed back to the bridge to eat.  Sometimes on it, most times under it.  Morning, noon, and after school, for years, that bridge was our meeting place, staging area and refuge.  The track field, out on Routt Street provided an out of sight hide away for 8th graders playing hooky and drinking beer. 

MacMurray was a growing institution when I was a kid.  I remember watching the chemistry building (Julian Hall) go up on Clay Ave.  It was on what seemed like more of a hill, in those days.  I spent happy winter days throwing snowballs at, and through, the windows of passing cars.  I remember Michaelson Hall being built, when I was very young.  Later, I marveled over all the out of state license plates in the parking lot and the loud music blasting from the windows.  Even later, I found myself in Michaelson, and other dorms, as their residents tolerated the long haired local kids who wandered into their rooms to smoke their pot and occasionally buy it, when they had cash.

MacMurray provided so many firsts.  Besides soccer and foosball, that was where I first saw a lacrosse game, a war protest, hippies and attended my first rock concert (The Grassroots, at Annie Merner Chapel).

MacMurray was central to every day on the east side of Jacksonville.  It was north, west and south of the hospital where I was born, and the church, grade and high schools where I spent 11 and a half years.  It was the eastern end of the street I grew up on and it's campus like a magnet. The clock on top of the library was a focal point of my life for 20 years.  It was visible going to school, church and work, from Beecher, College, Hardin or Clay streets.  The last memory I have of my mom, before we moved her to a nursing home, was of an autumn afternoon, walking her down Franklin St, across Clay and down the asphalt walk behind the chemistry building to Beecher, past the library and on down to East street and on south, through the fallen leaves, home. 

Bob Dylan dropped a new song today.  Tonight I'm reminded of the last line, of a song he released in 1974, "  ...I love you more than ever now that the past is gone."

IT'S NOT OVER, BECAUSE YOUR VOTE COUNTS

The Illinois primary, among others, is March 17.  That's when you can vote to nominate Bernie Sanders for President, and make America the country we were brought up to believe in.  The New Deal saved the elderly from poverty by creating Social Security.  Bernie wants to protect it, expand it and make sure it is properly funded.  Franklin Roosevelt believed that every human being was entitled to four basic freedoms:  the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear.  Bernie Sanders wants to fulfill that vision.  

Bernie supports a Green New Deal that will save our children and grandchildren from the ravages of a changing climate.  This is a plan that protects workers who work in affected fossil fuel industries.

At a time when the nation is rocked by a pandemic, it is clear that we need a leader with a plan big enough to tackle the problem.  Bernie supports Medicare for All, a single-payer, national health insurance program to provide everyone with comprehensive health care coverage.  No networks, no premiums, no deductibles, no copays, no surprise bills.

Bernie proposes College for All, and the elimination of student debt.  He also proposes Fair Banking for All.  Consumer loans and credit cards rates would be capped at 15 percent across all financial institutions.  Every post office could offer basic and affordable banking services.  (I remember when the post office was where you went to purchase money orders!),  If the Democratic Party really still wants to help the poor and marginalized of society, this is a simple but vitally important solution to those at the mercy of predatory lending institutions and without the liquidity to maintain bank accounts.

Now, I know, the media and a bunch of politicians have told you that the race is over.  It's not.  Some, in the last couple of days have called for the DNC to end the debates because they want to protect one of the candidates from scrutiny.  Some are even pretending that Bernie should just drop out and support Joe Biden.  Um, no.  Joe Biden only leads by 153 delegates. He is short by 1,113 delegates from the nomination.

The Democratic convention will have 3,979 delegates eligible to vote on the first ballot.  At this point, only 1,754 of them have been pledged to a candidate.  That's only 44%.  There are still 2,225 delegates still to be picked.  Voters in many states have not yet had the opportunity to have their say.

It was just three weeks ago that party leaders, and Joe Biden, were saying that if no one had yet earned a majority of delegates, after the primaries were all over, then the delegates should select the nominee, at a brokered convention.  Now, with no one within even a thousand delegates of a majority, they'd like the Sanders campaign to just stipulate Mr. Biden a victory?  No.

Either Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden will have a formidable opponent in Donald Trump.  This primary is about what we want, not what we don't.  None of us want Donald Trump.  But, what do we want to happen after January 20, 2021?  We can't simply go back to the days of Barack Obama.  The past is gone.  Damage has been done.  Climate change has to be tackled.  Urgently.  All Americans need affordable health care immediately.  Our children must be freed from the choice between higher education and future home ownership.  We owe them a clean, healthy, vibrant future.  There is one candidate with the energetic vision to offer us the America of our dreams.  This is a once in a lifetime chance.  Please.  Vote for Bernie Sanders and his down ballot delegates!