Travel preparations – Possible election difficulties – Evening statistics
An uneventful day, outside of preparing for travel. I will be going to Maine on Friday with several others and we will be staying together in a couple of rented houses to do some hiking there. We will be driving, of course; at this point journeys on airplanes appear to be too uncertain. (The air on the planes themselves is continually filtered and the chances of catching the virus while in flight should be fairly low, but waiting to be boarded in a crowded airport is another matter.) The drive will take about 12 hours and it will be fairly grueling at times; but, as the poet Byron once remarked in his letters, comfort must not be expected when one goes a-pleasuring. As with the earlier trip in August, I will take notes on a day-to-day basis, including the statistics for COVID cases; but I won’t be able to upload anything about the trip until I return.
There is a good deal of speculation on what will happen if Donald Trump is defeated but refuses to concede. That seems a valid cause for concern, for he has publicly declared that there is no way that he can be legitimately defeated. We had a similar crisis in 2000, when disagreement over the vote count in Florida generated several lawsuits initiated by both parties and was eventually escalated to the Supreme Count, which decided in favor of George Bush. Al Gore conceded at that point, not wishing to escalate the struggle further still to Congress. I am not an admirer of Gore – I find it difficult to respect a man who, while preaching about the need to conserve in order to staunch the tide of climate change, lives in a huge house that soaks up resources and takes private jets to wherever he travels as a matter of course – but in this instance I give him full credit for averting what could have been a national upheaval.
It probably can be taken for granted that there will be an election dispute of some sort. Individual states whose vote count is challenged have until December 8 to resolve any disputes over the vote, with state electors casting their Electoral College votes on December 14. After that, Congress will tally the Electoral College votes on January 6, in a joint session led by the incumbent vice-president who is also president of the Senate (Mike Pence in this case). If Congress fails to reach an agreement, the US would be in a situation similar to that of the disputed 1876 election when several states sent competing electoral college votes to Congress and the crisis was resolved only two days before the inauguration.
If no president is declared to be the winner, the Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi) would be appointed the acting president until the situation is resolved. But if each party declares its candidate to be the winner and refuses to concede, then even this compromise would not come to pass. Basically the inauguration in 2021 could be delayed for months, depending on how many politicians are willing to follow Trump’s lead in placing party politics over national interests.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 30,015,552; # of deaths worldwide: 944,499; # of cases U.S.: 6,825,967; # of deaths U.S.: 201,278. The earlier slowdown in our rates of increase has been only temporary; it looks like we are back to averaging 35,000-40,000 new cases and over 1,000 deaths daily. India’s case rate is more alarming still; it is receiving close to 100,000 new cases per day. Its case count already exceeds 5,000,000. (It must be remembered, however, that India’s population is four times the size of our own, so proportionately the rate of infection is still a good deal lower – 0.4% of India’s population has been infected, as opposed to well over 2% of ours.)