November 5, 2024: Donald Trump Is Returned to the Presidency

NOTE: While these entries are dated 2022, I decided to backdate the posting dates of events from 2023 onward to the same date in 2022.

November 5, 2024: On his 3rd try, Donald Trump finally gets what he really wants: The Presidential election, winning the popular vote, an actual majority of it, and, thanks to a ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States, immunity from criminal prosecution for the next 4 years.

I had hoped that women would come through and save us. But, as is so often the case, "It's the economy, stupid." Too many women put the price of supermarket eggs over the price of their own "eggs." The Democrats did very little to point out that Trump has a record on the economy, and it was horrible.

The Hispanic men who decided they couldn't vote for a woman? Wait until they discover that the Republicans don't consider them "white."

The young, first-time-voting Arab-Americans who couldn't vote for Harris because she was a part of the Biden Administration that supported Israel over Gaza? Many of them were too young to have paid attention to the news in 2016 and 2017, and don't remember the Muslim ban, and haven't considered that Trump is a lot closer in policy to Netanyahu than Biden is. If they expected me to have sympathy for their people and their plight before, they can forget it now. Because of their votes, or non-votes as the case may be, more Americans will die than Gazans who have already died.

Trump and his Vice Presidential nominee, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, won 31 States for 312 Electoral Votes. The Democratic Party nominees, Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, won 19 States, plus the District of Columbia, for 229 Electoral Votes.

But that popular vote? Trump got 77.3 million votes, for 49.74 percent. It's his best performance, but, for the 3rd time, he did not get a majority of the popular vote. Harris had 75.0 million, for 48.27 percent. Harris' total was 6.2 million short of Joe Biden's total in 2020. Trump's total was 3.1 million more than 4 years earlier.

The Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, got 861,000, for 0.55 percent, a gain of 452,000 over her 2020 total. The Libertarian candidate, Chase Oliver, got 650,000, for 0.42 percent, a loss of 1.3 million for his party. (In 2016, Stein got 1,457,000, for 1.07 percent; and Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson got 4,489,000, for 3.3 percent. This was enough to cost Hillary Clinton some States.)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., still on the ballot despite dropping out and endorsing Trump, got 756,000, for 0.49 percent. Other candidates got 834,000, for 0.54 percent.

Put it all together, and about 155.1 million people voted, compared to about 158.4 million in the COVID-affected election of 2020. That's about 3.3 million people who voted last time, but not this time. Where did they go? Why haven't we heard from them?

Something isn't right here. Above and beyond the result. If anything, population growth, alone, should have given both Parties more votes than they got in 2020. It's happened many times before, including a few times where the nominee of the party finishing 2nd got more votes than any previous winning nominee.

Where was this "record turnout" we kept hearing about, all year long? Where are all these "newly registered voters" we kept hearing about? Where are all these "people who've never voted for a Democrat before"?

Where were all these millions of young women that Taylor Swift supposedly registered to vote at her concerts? Did they decide that their false perception that the economy was bad -- or their equally false perception of their white privilege being enough to overcome their status as women, and thus as second-class citizens in a Trump society -- was more important than any of the many reasons not to vote for Trump? Did they betray their beloved Tay-Tay, who was very open about her feelings about Trump, and her endorsement of Harris?

Maybe a lot of them went to Trump. If he did get them, it wasn't a big chunk of them, which might well have been too suspicious.

Did they register, or maintain their registration, and simply not vote, because they didn't like either candidate? If that was the case, they should have sucked it up and voted for Harris, anyway, because she's not a Fascist, a rapist, a felon, and an idiot, who sent terrorists to try to sabotage the last election, while Trump is all five of those.

Harris conceded at 4:22 PM the next day. In a speech lasting 12 minutes, outside Frederick Douglass Hall at her Alma Mater, Howard University in Washington, she told her supporters to accept the result, but to not give up the fight.

In the Congressional elections, the Democrats gained 2 seats in the House of Representatives, not quite enough to take control. The Republicans gained a net 3 seats in the Senate, to take control. Trump now controls all 3 branches of the federal government.

Three Democratic incumbents fell: Jon Tester lost to Tim Sheehy in Montana, Sherrod Brown lost to Bernie Moreno in Ohio, and Bob Casey Jr. lost to David McCormick in Pennsylvania. The Democrats got a little good news in the Senate, as promoted from the House were Adam Schiff of California, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Andy Kim of New Jersey. Blunt Rochester and Angela Alsobrooks of adjoining Maryland, defeating former Governor Larry Hogan, gave the Senate 2 black women for the 1st time.

Small gains for the Democrats aside, Trump and his fans got what they wanted. They own it all now. Whatever happens over the next four years, it is all on them.

They have bet their lives, and they have bet everybody else's lives, on Trump having a successful second term. Even though his first term was, by any rational measure, a complete disaster. The day he left office the first time, the country's economy was in tatters, it was causing the inflation you blamed on Joe Biden. Over 1 million people died from COVID, when he could have saved the vast majority of those had he taken it seriously. The crime problem had gotten worse. And he hadn't come close to solving the border problem you care so damned much about.

They decided that his first term, his various failures, his various crimes including impeachable offenses, his various bigotries, and the other evidence of his low character don't matter. They also decided that, whatever virtues Harris has, they don't matter, either. Whatever I might think of such an attitude, it is their right.

But he is now 78 years old, older than Biden was when he was elected, and he is morbidly obese. And even though that they also know that, if, for whatever reason, he can't complete this term, the Presidency will fall to J.D. Vance. I'm sure that not one of them was undecided, heard that Vance was the choice, and chose Trump on that basis. They're so ignorant that, aside from those actually from Ohio, most of them had probably never even heard of Vance before that.

But it's all on him Trump, and it's all on his voters. Whatever happens over the next four years, it's because they chose this guy.

If it works out in their favor, they are well within their rights to gloat.

If it doesn't -- if Trump crashes the economy a second time, if crime gets worse, if the immigration problem is not fixed, if there is a foreign-policy disaster, if there is another pandemic -- I am well within my rights to tell you that I told them so.

Given history, we know that a President needs to avoid a "Depression," a "Vietnam," a "Watergate," an "Iran Hostage Crisis," and a "COVID." Trump already had a "Depression," a "Watergate," and introduced "a COVID" into the discussion, all in his first term. Now, he has to avoid all of them in his second term. He could, if he had learned things.

Donald Trump is not the kind of person who learns things. Did you choose him?

Whatever happens, as was said in the first Joker film, you get what you fucking deserve.

Right before the election, the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History featured "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist playing Trump, and actress Kimberly Michelle Vaughn playing Harris.

As they usually do with the winner of the Presidential election, Time magazine named Trump its Person of the Year for 2024, as they had for 2016. They had named Swift Person of the Year for 2023, largely for her voter registration efforts. If those efforts had been successful, she would have been a legitimate candidate for Person of the Year, although it still should have been Harris. But Trump's win makes her selection for 2023 look dubious.

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November 5, 2024 was a Tuesday. Baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. The NBA purposely scheduled no games for the day, to promote voting. There were 11 games in the NHL:

* The New York Islanders beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 4-3 in a shootout at the UBS Arena in Elmont, Long Island, New York.

* The Calgary Flames beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-2 in overtime at the Bell Centre in Montreal. Matthew Coronato scored the winning goal, just 7 seconds into overtime.

* The Carolina Hurricanes beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 6-4 at the Lenovo Center in Raleigh, North Carolina.

* In an "Original Six" matchup, the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Boston Bruins, 4-0 at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.

* The Buffalo Sabres beat the Ottawa Senators, 5-1 at the KeyBank Center in Buffalo.

* The Los Angeles Kings beat the Minnesota Wild, 5-1 at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.

* The St. Louis Blues beat the Tampa Bay Lightning, 3-2 at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis.

* The Winnipeg Jets beat the Utah Hockey Club, 3-0 at the Canada Life Centre in Winnipeg.

* The Colorado Avalanche, 6-4 at the Ball Arena in Denver.

* The Vancouver Canucks beat the Anaheim Ducks, 5-1 at the Honda Center in Anaheim.

* And the San Jose Sharks beat the Columbus Blue Jackets, 2-1 in overtime a the SAP Center in San Jose. Alexander Wenberg scored the winning goal, 1:49 into overtime.