Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump won the presidential election despite getting 2.8 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton.
Many on the losing side were not only surprised that he won, but that one could legally win with fewer votes.
Of them, many immediately protested the outcome and have for four years unrelentingly declared Trump is "not my president," referring to him as the "current occupant of the White House" and labeling themselves "The Resistance," as is their right.
In 2020, after the Democratic National Committee once again undermined the overwhelmingly popular presidential primary campaign of Bernie Sanders, the nomination went to Joe Biden, who ran a pandemic-induced non-campaign from his basement with the simple pitch that he is the better alternative to Trump.
It worked.
Regardless of how many times the Trump campaign claimed voter fraud, it consistently lost in court, including in rulings from judges he appointed. His high-powered attorneys Lin Wood and Sidney Powell promised boatloads of evidence but produced virtually none of it publicly or enough to rack up wins in court.
But it is a mistake for those on the winning side in 2020 to assume that those on its losing side will treat Biden any differently or fairly than they treated Trump for the past four years.
Blame for that is on the comprehensively biased mainstream media, where anchors and news reporters do not hide their personal beliefs as they are supposed to. Even more blame goes to the toxic world of social media.
And to be honest, those on the losing side in 2020 have a better hand to play moving forward. Here's why.
Thanks to both of Georgia's Senate seats flipping from Red to Blue last week, the United States Senate is now split 50/50, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris casting potential tie-breaking votes. But there is a misconception that the Senate has a lot of ties that need breaking.
Much of what the Senate does requires 60 votes, not 50 plus 1. With 74 million Trump voters as angry and amped-up as their 2016 counterparts, many Senate Republicans will never swing their votes to the other side. And keep a close eye on how three conservative Democrat Senators vote over the next few years: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana, and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he would "change America" if the Senate flipped but will be hard-pressed to deliver on things like statehood for Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico or packing the Supreme Court.
Similarly, the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives is minimal and coping with a burgeoning and demanding AOC-led "Squad," the Washington Post recently wrote, "Democrats House majority is razor-thin. Any glitch could spell disaster."
So it is not too soon to think of these matters in terms of the 2022 mid-terms. Redistricting now favors the House and possibly the Senate flipping back to the Republicans.
Does anyone care to guess how many days there are until the mid-terms on November 8, 2022?
It is 666 days from tonight.
Whimsical as that might be, 666 days is the blink of an eye in Washington, and planning for those mid-terms is already underway.
That brings us to last week when Trump gave another fiery speech to a swath of his 74 million supporters as the electoral votes became final.
Many Trump loyalists stormed and briefly took over the United States Capitol, not dissimilar to rioters overtaking American cities in 2020 in protest of police misconduct that led to the deaths of innocent Americans like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others.
Invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from his final few days in office is a rumored topic of discussion between Vice President Mike Pence and Trump's remaining Cabinet, but it is exceedingly unlikely.
If Democrats intend to shoot Biden in the foot, as it were, the best way to do it is with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's attempt to impeach Trump a second time, which may be in the works as you read this. The Senate is on recess until the day before Biden's inauguration. Trump will be out of office before the Senate, led by Schumer, could hold a trial, making his removal from office moot and creating a circus during Biden's first 100 days. Pelosi's actual goal is preventing Trump from running again in 2024, but the odds of Schumer getting 67 votes in favor of an impeachment conviction is as remote as Neptune.
Why? Because 74 million Trump supporters would likely retaliate against Republican Senators voting to convict a President who is no longer in office.
Pelosi's Impeachment 2.0 would also undermine Biden's efforts to bring any unity to the country. He deserves the chance to try and do that, but it would instead explicitly encourage Resistance 2.0.
It is what some call penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Trump is now largely silenced and there are too many checks and balances to enable him to futz with the nuclear codes during another unflattering segment on "Morning Joe." It is wiser to encourage him to play golf, tell him it was a heck of a ride, Don and send him on his way because the pendulum will likely swing back precisely 666 days from today.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, was runner-up for the 2020 Los Angeles Press Club journalism award for Best Political Commentary and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star News, Los Angeles Downtown News, and the Los Angeles Times in its Sports, Opinion and Entertainment sections and Sunday Magazine, among other publishers. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Photos: EPA; Reuters; Getty Images – Getty. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
