Whew, this election drama is disrupting my usual sleep schedule. Not an expert on actuarial data pertaining to Supreme Court justices, but the apparent Biden win, together with the recent debacle relating to RBG's death, and the string of Republican victories last night in the most contested senate races, suggest to me that 82-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer should announce his retirement in the early evening hours of Inauguration Day. And the Biden team should start looking now for his replacement, some Ivy League legal beagle who doesn't belong to the Federalist Society but does have a healthy lifestyle and the underlying biology of a teenager.
I shouldn't laugh, because it's repulsive, but Trump is such a child. His two-thirty-in-the-morning statement last night: what a joke. Boils down to, I'm going to catch up in Arizona and Nevada when all the votes are counted; meanwhile "they" are trying to steal the election in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia—by counting all the votes. It's even better than that when he says it since I'm not up to the challenge of reproducing the clownish aspects of his delivery. It's like nothing anyone has ever seen before. In a tweet, he may have inadvertently hinted at the identity of "they" by referring to "Poles," unless he meant "polls."
It just occurred to me, father of daughters, that when Biden delivers his first State of the Union Address the two people sitting behind him—the Speaker of the House and the Vice President—will both be women. It'll be good not seeing Pence back there smiling down on Trump like he was a broad-shouldered John the Baptist or something.
One thing that's puzzled me, here in the Upper Midwest, is the facts of life relating to other parts of the U.S. For example, why is New Hampshire nothing like Vermont, politically? Are they not, as the election gurus are fond of saying, "geographically, culturally, and demographically similar"? Yet Vermont is one of the bluest states and New Hampshire, I hate the word, a "battleground."
But maybe I should look closer to home for my puzzles. When Scott Walker was governing, so to speak, Wisconsin, we had in Minnesota a Democratic governor. Then in 2016 Wisconsin got into bed with Trump while we only flirted with him. Then last night we walked away from him while Wisconsin almost fell into his bed again. Aren't Minnesotans and Wisconsinites "geographically, culturally, and demographically similar"? Do Leinenkugels kill more brain cells?
Scanning election returns, it appears that the difference is that Twin Citians diverge from the residents of greater Milwaukee. The so-called WOW counties—for Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington—surrounding Milwaukee went for Trump by roughly 2-to-1 in 2016, and last night they barely budged. The Twin Cities suburbs, on the other hand, are behaving more sensibly. Two of our suburban counties, Washington and Dakota, voted narrowly for Hillary Clinton and then for Biden by double-digits last night. In the others, Trump's margins were reduced considerably: in Anoka County from ten points to two, in Scott County from fifteen points to six, and in Carver County from thirteen points to five. Trump's deficit statewide grew from around 40,000 to more than 230,000.
It's going to be obvious that I don't know how to account for this, but I think I've noticed, when traveling into the interior of Wisconsin, that somewhere around Tomah the people start to look different—bigger, especially in the head and hands, with a lot of flesh under the chin and frequently broken blood vessels visible in the cheeks and nose. In my mind, the way the people look is associated with the billboards along the interstate, which advertise the availability, at the next exit, of LIQUOR! CIGARETTES! FIREWORKS! CHEESE! For some reason, it does seem sort of Trumpy, even if Trump himself does not partake in any of the pleasures. I like how, cruising along again, the cheese curds squeak against your teeth as you wonder about the oversized native you just observed smoking a heater while pumping gas.
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