On Oct. 16, 2015, a Twitter user called @cavalorn tweeted, “‘I never thought leopards would eat my face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.” That little meme has been all over recently, and perfectly describes where we are.
Tariffs on imported goods (and retaliatory tariffs against U.S. exports), mass deportations, members of Congress poking around in your uterus, tax cuts for billionaires and corporations, burning more fossil fuels, vendettas against opponents — it’s all been there, right in front of us, through the whole campaign.
We should assume he means what he said. Sen. Mike Lee just came out with a plan to repeal Obamacare because he thinks it’s a good idea to bring back the “pre-existing condition” exclusion that prevented people from buying health insurance at any cost. Yeah, people are lined up asking for that, just like we all want our new TVs to cost twice as much.
The Wall Street Journal endorsed Trump, enthusiastically saying that he can’t be as dangerous as feared. The WSJ wrote, “Mr. Trump was too undisciplined, and his attention span too short, to stay on one message, much less stage a coup.” And you sweat less than any fat girl I ever danced with. That’s our protection against his most outrageous positions — he’s too scatter-brained to pull it off, so we don’t need to worry.
Bumbling incompetence and time on the golf course will save the day. Except that he might be able to hire more focused people like Stephen Miller to run his mass deportation plan with ruthless efficiency.
Congress will remain useless as always with the Republicans now controlling the Senate, and the House so evenly split that it can’t function. The Supreme Court is in the bag, so there’s no protection there.
The law doesn’t apply to the president any more. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito will probably solicit one more round of extravagant parting gifts from their admirers and retire, clearing the path for somebody 40 years old who will spend a lifetime on the bench in service of the Heritage Foundation.
Kamala Harris ran an amazing campaign, coming within striking distance in about 110 days. She was essentially invisible as vice president, so to have come from almost completely unknown to a respectable shot at winning is impressive.
Sadly, Joe Bader Bidensburg refused to see the writing on the wall. Instead of announcing his well-earned retirement and clearing the path for a normal primary process, he hung around well past his “sell-by date,” insisting that he was going to run again. Until Nancy Pelosi “helped” him make the right decision — too late.
That’s the same egotistical stubbornness Ruth Bader Ginsburg exhibited that resulted in Amy Coney Barrett being her legacy for the next 40 years. Biden’s legacy is Trump’s return.
So far, Trump has not said the election was rigged or there were busloads of foreigners voting by the thousands. I guess that only happens when he loses. But he won in what certainly appears to be a clean election.
For a change, the winner of the electoral vote also won the popular vote, with Trump having about 5 million more votes than Harris overall. I suspect it has a lot more to do with the price of eggs than Ukraine or tariffs. Apparently 71 million people think he’s just fine.
We will have to wait a while longer for that kumbaya moment. There’s the outstanding matter of the sentencing on 34 felony convictions coming up. Not sure how that’s going to work. But the assumption is that he will take office in January, and preside from the White House (or a golf course nearby) rather than a New York state prison.
And when the leopards start eating faces, no one should be surprised.
The local elections went as expected. We had solid candidates all around and it’s hard to see how Summit County could have lost no matter which of the council candidates had won.
The state Supreme Court told the Legislature that the laws they wrote apply to them, and two of the constitutional amendments didn’t count. Regardless, the state Legislature will remain the cesspool that it is. Nothing short of redistricting and term limits will clean up that mess.
But the sun rose Wednesday morning, right on schedule. It will continue to do that every day, and this, too, shall pass.
In theory, we will be skiing in two weeks. There’s a lot of snow to be made, and hopefully, a lot of natural snow to fall between now and opening day. Getting out on the snow will be good for my general outlook on things. I can’t do anything about the rest of it, so I might as well go skiing. Time on the snow cures about anything that ails you.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.
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