I admit being a wee bit intrigued by the straw-grasping prospect of a presidential election recount. Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, has raised more than $5 million to finance a re-tabulation of votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The margins were thin in all three states, and there have been unconfirmed reports there of hacking or machine malfunction. Should this Hail Mary pass reach the end zone, reversing the outcome in those states, Hillary Clinton would take 46 electoral college votes from Donald Trump and become the 45th president of the United States.
Needless to say, in a week filled with a parade of wingnuts anointed for key cabinet and White House positions, this recount talk has been a soothing salve for us liberals. We had already fastened our Time Machine seatbelts in preparation for the flight back to the 1950s. Now we can at least squint through the aircraft window and, if we pretend hard enough, almost see a secretary of state who is neither Rudy Giuliani nor Mitt Romney. It proves the old adage that when you desperately want to give up on reality, you will happily settle for a good fantasy.
We have all used these fleeting and illusive what-if moments to breathe new life into different scenarios that seemed to have suddenly died very late on that very dark night of November 8. Some have chosen to fix their imaginary sights on a rock solid liberal Supreme Court majority. Others let themselves see possible health care fixes, instead of an end to coverage for millions of Americans. As a recovering journalist, I’ve carved out a considerably different niche, one that is totally delicious to contemplate.
My fantasy is nothing less than a complete and total reversal of all those deeply analytical, thumb-sucking, ponderous think pieces cranked out by news outlets over the past three weeks. You know, the ones that attempted to explain, in 10,000 words or less, precisely how it was that a racist, crotch grabbing buffoon, with no government experience or aptitude, became the leader of the free world. I’m talking about this kind of stuff:
“Democrats Embrace of Neoliberalism Won it for Trump.”
“Election of Trump is Stunning Repudiation of Establishment.”
“Failed Polls Question the Profession of Prognostication.”
“Clinton’s Loss is Nail in the Coffin of Center-Left Politics.”
So now comes the juicy part, the joyous fantasy: Clinton wins in the electoral college through the recount, complimenting her popular vote advantage. Now what do we want to say to the opus writers? Well, let’s cue the audio from the third debate and isolate those rich, snide Trumpian tones: “Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.”
Better yet, flash way back to SNL’s Emily Litella: “Never mind!”
This would be so much better than the classic “Dewy Defeats Truman” headline in the 1948 Chicago Tribune. That was simply the wrong outcome. Here we’re dealing with deep existential analysis about who we are as a nation, all based on facts that just turned into a bunch of hooey and are no longer in evidence. Reverse three states and, presto, neoliberalism saves the day for Clinton, Trump’s loss validates the establishment and the pollsters and Clinton breathe new life into center-left politics.
How wonderful would that be? The best part is that it might well persuade serious newsroom types not to pound out those definitive post-election what-does-it-all-mean pieces hours after the polls close. When I wrote about politics, back in the pre-digital Gutenberg days, the ritual was to work up an analysis for the Sunday paper following a Tuesday election. That gave us a few days to think things out and, more importantly, to talk with political types after they had a chance to process the election results.
Now, of course, the deep, navel gazing begins around noon on election day, as soon as the first exit poll numbers come in and are chewed up and spit out by the talking heads on cable news and other soldiers of information and misinformation in the Twittersphere, blogosphere and wherever else our clicks and eyeballs may take us. Sadly, the poor legacy media tries to keep up, rather than sticking to its brand of waiting to make sure it gets it right.
And so it was, at 3 a.m., November 9, that a group of New York Times political reporters recorded a podcast aimed at answering the question, “How Did We Get This Wrong?” One of them said the media’s inability to sense the magnitude of pro-Trump sentiment was “a failure of expertise on the order of the fall of the Soviet Union or the Vietnam War.” Another Times staffer, less than an hour after Trump appeared to have amassed more than 270 electoral votes, offered this instant analysis: “Fundamentally Clinton, as it turns out, was the worst candidate Democrats could have run. Had almost any other major Democratic candidate been the nominee, they would have beaten Donald Trump.” So many conclusions with minimal facts and so little sleep.
At this point, Clinton’s lead in the popular vote surpasses 2 million and continues to grow, giving her a margin of about 1.5% over Trump, not too far from most of the pre-election polls. If you added to that the fantasy scenario of her winning a recount in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, what would we have? I say that would really and truly be a “failure of expertise on the order of the fall of the Soviet Union or the Vietnam War.”
And, oh, what a sweet failure it would be!