If I love you, I care that you eat

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that as of early this morning Joe Biden is now ahead in both Pennsylvania and Georgia, though both are still counting and neither has yet been called for him. Biden needs only Pennsylvania to put him over the top. Nevada and Arizona are still counting too. Laura Clawson of Kos reported that the Secret Service protection for Biden has been increased, though not yet to the level he would get as official president-elect. The increase is because he and Harris have been getting death threats and those trying to disrupt counting have guns. With the extra security the sky over Biden’s home in Delaware has been declared National Defense Airspace. Sumner discussed the lie laden rant the nasty guy delivered last night. Even NPR pulled away. The nasty guy isn’t going to concede. But there is no law saying he must. He doesn’t have to call Biden and be gracious (or not). Biden gave a statement:

“As we said on July 19th, the American people will decide this election. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.”

The nasty guy’s nuisance lawsuits (13 in just Pennsylvania) are not getting very far. Certainly not far enough for him to take a case to the Supremes. As for the one that had been before the Supremes (which would let him return) was about ballots arriving after election day. Those haven’t been counted yet. And Biden is winning without them. I said a day or two ago that the GOP kept the Senate. Well, maybe not. Clawson reported there are two Senate seats open in Georgia (where the count for president is still going on). A law from the Jim Crow era says that a candidate must receive more than 50% of the vote, not just have the highest vote count in a multi-candidate field. That worked as intended in the case of Kelly Loeffler (acting senator) against Raphael Warnock, a black pastor. But it didn’t work in the case of David Perdue against Jon Ossoff. Perdue, the incumbent, who is all in for the nasty guy, fell below 50%. Both races go to a runoff on January 5. Which makes Georgia the center of election spending for the next two months. Ossoff’s campaign has signs printed that say: “Vote your Ossoff.” Leah McElrath, whose tweets I’ve quoted frequently, is a psychotherapist. She has written that the nasty guy is more than a narcissist, he’s a malignant narcissist. Another term for the latter is: psychopath. From a thread she wrote back in September:

As I’ve written about before, malignant narcissists like Trump engage in three phases of relationship with their targets: 1. Idealization 2. Devaluation 3. Discard Trump gained power by wooing his supporters. He reflected back to them an idealized image of themselves.

During idealization he basks in the adulation he received from his supporters. Eventually that euphoria ends. In devaluation the user binds the target with abuse interspersed with acts of positive regard. It is this mix that prompts targets to stay, rather than leave. The nasty guy’s response to the pandemic is an example of devaluation. When the narcissist feels betrayed (and losing an election would definitely do that) he moves on to the discard phase. The feature of the discard phase is annihilatory rage. McElrath linked to a couple other threads about this rage, then said she’ll write more about the discard phase. Two months later she says she’ll get to it soon. It is difficult to write about because it requires entering their mindset. From the nasty guy’s comments McElrath believes the nasty guy is entering the discard phase. He’s turning on his supporters. It will be dangerous. For example, McElrath quoted a tweet from Ben Riley-Smith who included a chunk from a nasty guy fundraiser:

This is your FINAL NOTICE. So far, you’ve ignored all our emails asking you to join us in DEFENDING THE ELECTION. You’ve ignored Team Trump, Eric, Lara, Don, the Vice President AND you’ve even ignored the President of the United States.

Sumner reported that Ronna McDaniel, the head of the Republican National Committee has put out a call to loyalists to make claims that there was ballot fraud.

Trump campaign officials and Minnesota Republicans are encouraging Trump supporters to make claims about ballot fraud, even when they have no evidence of ballot fraud, with promises that the campaign and the RNC will back them up. ... Attempting to vote multiple times is fraud. Attempting to alter ballots is fraud. Deliberately discarding submitted ballots is fraud. But claiming that election fraud occurred when it did not is also election fraud. And encouraging thousands of activists across the nation to engage in deliberately fraudulent conspiracy puts the RNC and chair Ronna McDaniel at the center of a genuine “vast right-wing conspiracy” that demands to be given swift attention by both state and federal law enforcement.

The Michigan Supreme Court has flipped to a Democratic majority. These races are described as non partisan, though the parties nominate the candidates. Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack kept her seat. Because she campaigned with Elizabeth Welch, Welch won too. The 4-3 Dem majority will help Gov. Gretchen Whitmer protect us from the virus (where cases are surging) and also help in redistricting if the GOP is successful in getting the federal Supremes to overturn the state’s independent redistricting commission. Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos included a couple interesting quotes. The first is from Tom Nichols of The Atlantic:

But no matter how this election concludes, America is now a different country. Nearly half of the voters have seen Trump in all of his splendor—his infantile tirades, his disastrous and lethal policies, his contempt for democracy in all its forms—and they decided that they wanted more of it. His voters can no longer hide behind excuses about the corruption of Hillary Clinton or their willingness to take a chance on an unproven political novice. They cannot feign ignorance about how Trump would rule. They know, and they have embraced him.

“They” is 68 million people. More important to them than the virus, the economy, or anything else, is the preservation of white supremacy. Even when the subject is Hispanic voters. From Brandon Sanchez writing for Commonweal Magazine:

But what was the substance of this American mythology? For Hispanic Republicans, it most of all has been the idea that hard work would lead to success—the promise of upward mobility. And if you consider yourself a hard worker deserving of wealth and status, you’ll always be able to find a scapegoat to deem undeserving and less hardworking: a drain on resources. Cadava is most persuasive whenever he tentatively edges toward the importance of anti-Blackness to the story he tells, hinting at the importance that the architecture of whiteness—and the yearning for proximity to whiteness—plays in American politics.

After that, this is fresh air. Cory Bush is now the first black woman elected to Congress from Missouri. She unseated a black man (and did so in the primary) who had taken over the seat from his father and held it for many years. Her acceptance speech included these wonderful words:

St. Louis, if you know nothing else, you remember this: Your congresswoman-elect, soon-to-be congresswoman loves you. Your congresswoman-elect, soon-to-be congresswoman loves you; and I need you to get that. Because if I love you, I care that you eat. If I love you, I care that you have shelter and adequate safe housing. If I love you, I care that you have clean water and clean air, and you have a livable wage. If I love you, I care that the police don't murder you. If I love you, I care that you make it home safely. If I love you, I care that you are able to have a dignity, and have a quality of life the same as the next person, the same as those that don't look like you. That didn't grow up the same way you did. Those that don't have the same socioeconomic status as you. I care.