Well, in the country with the world's greatest constitution and the world's lousiest election system, it's now five days since the laughably misnamed "Election Day". So how's it going?
In California's fourteenth congressional district, they've now managed to count an impressive forty-four per cent of the vote! This is the home turf of Representative Eric Shagdwell, the Chinese asset penetrated by Fang Fang. So one would not have thought the outcome in doubt. But for various reasons they're still going to be counting until next weekend at least.
So I take it this fourteenth congressional district is a vast tract of semi-wildnerness recently devastated by Hurricane Helene?
Actually, no, it's a chunk of suburban Alameda County - a million-and-a-half people in a constituency of less than 700 square miles. For purposes of comparison, Botswana has two-and-a-half-million people spread over 225,000 square miles, and ten days ago they managed to count every vote and swear in the winning opposition party in under forty-eight hours. But that's a normal election in an advanced nation, so it would be absurd to have similar expectations of a sleepy Third World backwater such as California.
Why are major American states slow-walking the count? So they can keep the House and even the Senate (where Bob Casey has yet to concede Pennsylvania) in play. It may well be that they have to accept Trump taking the oath of office on January 20th, but they are determined to hobble his next term as they hobbled his last.
And that's just the Dems. The incoming forty-seventh has as much to fear, if not more, from the duplicitous bastards in his own party. Congressman Shagdwell's fellow Chinese asset, Mitch McConnell, has timed the election of his successor to ensure someone as hostile to the Trump agenda as he is can be installed while the President-Elect is still distracted by the victory ballyhoo. It may be too late to steal the presidential election, but they can still steal the term. Which is what matters.
With that in mind, I thought you'd enjoy a replay of The Mark Steyn Show from the weekend after the 2020 election, in which I surveyed what I called (three days in) the world's greatest electoral heist of the democratic era. I also reflected on the long sordid history of corrupt American cities, offered an extended edition of Mark's Mailbox full of interesting insights, and fondly recalled a favorite department store from a lost America that was nevertheless surprisingly pertinent to the 2020 vote.
The show stands up pretty well, I think.Click above to listen.As you know, our show is not like the Cumulus nancies with the butcher-than-thou hard-rock bumper-music and the easy-listening opinions. But, for one week only, we went with a rocky refrain of "There's a coup comin' on" - because there was. One thing is different from four years ago: Trump won beyond the margin of steal. But, in Pennsylvania, California and elsewhere, everything else is exactly the same.
Herewith a few excerpts:
So for four years everyone who matters has been determined to evict Trump from the Oval Office and to teach the American people that this is never going to be allowed to happen again. If you don't like Joe Biden, try Jeb or Kasich, because that's the extent of the permitted choice.
Hence Mitch McConnell's arrangements for the imminent election of his successor.
On the other hand:
The only good news - and I mean this, I want him to do this - the only good news is that President Trump is telling friends he's going to run in 2024. He's going to be the Grover Cleveland of the twenty-first century. Yeah, go for it.
He did, and he is. In as institutionally corrupt a country as America, that took guts - especially given what they had in mind for him, as was all too obvious even in those first days:
It's my view that, after the Biden regime takes power, as in many coup situations, they will want to have the previous leader arrested. I'm being perfectly serious here. It is the intention of the Democrat Party to put Trump in gaol. So, when he launches the Trump news network, it's gonna need to be based out of Costa Rica or the Turks and Caicos or somewhere.
Oh, but what about that constitution? Four years ago, the wankercons and the parchment fetishists - try to keep a straight face as I say this - looked to the courts to save them:
John Roberts didn't want a piece of this before the election, when the court would have been perceived as merely setting the rules of the election. He won't want to go near it afterwards when the court will be perceived, at least in the media, as changing the results of the election. That's why conservative intellectuals focused on the Supreme Court are such chumps - because, if you're banking on judges, you're already playing defense.
It's not often that I quote Braveheart, but four years ago I was driven to it:
Your title gives you claim to the throne of our country. But men don't follow titles, they follow courage. Now our people know you. Noble and common, they respect you. And if you would just lead them to freedom, they'd follow you. And so would I.
To which I added:
Men don't follow titles, even titles like 'Mr President'. They follow courage. Seventy million Americans are about to become the victims of the greatest and most brazen heist in the history of modern self-governing societies, and those seventy million Americans want justice.
Trump had extraordinary courage, and on Tuesday night he gave them justice.
Aside from Braveheart, I also read from a terrific book of 1904 on municipal corruption, The Shame of the Cities by Lincoln Steffens. This passage stayed with me as I watched the quadrennial shenanigans:
The Philadelphia machine isn't the best. It isn't sound, and I doubt if it would stand in New York or Chicago. The enduring strength of the typical American political machine is that it is a natural growth - a sucker, but deep-rooted in the people. The New Yorkers vote for Tammany Hall. The Philadelphians do not vote; they are disfranchised, and their disfranchisement is one anchor of the foundation of the Philadelphia organization.
This is no figure of speech. The honest citizens of Philadelphia have no more rights at the polls than the Negroes down South.
Mr Steffens had Philadelphia's number then, and he has it now. Which prompted this aside from me:
It's only a surprise to Republican lawyers on the morning after. America's cities shame us still. And yet how did Americans react to the fine work of Gustavus Myers and Lincoln Steffens? For every Mr Smith Goes to Washington, there are a zillion films, novels, plays, even a couple of musicals in which corrupt urban ward heelers are presented as lovable rogues.
True. And exceptionally American:
The voting dead became a running joke and the joke ran for over a century, until November 2020, when the graveyards rose up and in a political zombie apocalypse overwhelmed the living. One day historians will manage to identify the deciding vote, the one that put Joe over the top, and they'll find it was cast by Jeffrey Epstein in at least five different states.
~Mark Steyn Club members who wish to use their personal podcast players to listen to The Mark Steyn Show or Tales for Our Time can find instructions here - and the RSS page itself here.
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