“Detroit and Philadelphia known as two of the most corrupt political places of anywhere in our country …easily….cannot be responsible for engineering the outcome of a Presidential
race,” sniveled Trump .

November 5 , 2020

Translation:
Black votes don’t matter.

I wonder why such awful corruption in those places of which Trump speaks was not cleaned up during his four years in office? But let’s not take this President at his word. He lies.

Hats off to the “engineers “ in Philadelphia and Detroit ( and Milwaukee and Atlanta ?) , for bringing Trump down , is what I say!

What has just happened over these last four days is miraculous to say the least . Who thought millions and millions of  people would vote by mail during a Covid pandemic essentially for the expressed purpose of evicting an incumbent President ? Trump didn’t. Obviously.

It is no small task to defeat an incumbent President who , in the first instance , attained office by defeating the opposing party’s President. Only Benjamin Harrison ( 1892 to Grover Cleveland ) and Jimmy Carter ( 1980 to Ronald Reagan ) are so distinguished . And now Donald Trump , 2020 , to Joseph R. Biden.

To accomplish this feat , during a viral pandemic that has resulted in over 200,000 American deaths in just eight months, would have been thought impossible this past Labor Day. It was nothing short of a measure of the intensity of the opposition to this President; an intensity he delighted in fueling.

It takes some doing for an incumbent President to lose. Jimmy Carter had sky high gasoline prices , the Iran hostages , and a rebellion in his party led by Ted Kennedy.

Trump had the problem of Covid-19  but that’s not why he lost. He lost because of how he handled Covid-19. Had Trump done what almost all Governors have done, he would have been re-elected. Easily.  Instead , Trump was repelled by the impunity of Covid , he personalized it as he does with his hatred for all things not his base vote . He resented the virus and would not respect it.  So he demonized all science that would have de-politicized the virus and instead made fun of the protocols.

All of this revealed itself in the way Trump conflated Covid with the election. In effect, the  fearless, rally-going Republicans would vote at the polls and the wimpy, masked Democrats would vote by mail. And that is what happened.

Trump bet against the Democrats being able to organize and galvanize a Vote – By- Mail operation of such vast magnitude. At some point he realized they had and began ranting against what is a legitimate voting venue by calling it corrupt and fraudulent.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in Pennsylvania. There it seemed like almost all mail votes were by Biden voters . Amazingly, even in red counties, the vote by mail was overwhelmingly Democratic.

Trump brought this defeat down on himself. The question now is how much longer is the Republican Party , such as it is , going to play along with him as he denigrates the American electorate ? For sure , they must know he will not go off gently into the good night.

Bernard Kenny of Hoboken is the former 33rd District State Senator.