10/5/24

Election countdown - 1 month to go
            "SO WHAT?"

Trump’s callous rebuke, after learning of his vice president’s escape from Capitol rioters, may be the question that decides the 2024 election

SO WHAT? if Nibi, the rescued beaver, were forced to return to the woodlands this winter.

SO WHAT? If Donald J.Trump, defendant, were returned to the White House this winter

IN ELECTIONS, as in life, what really matters often boils down to this short, but loaded question: “So what?”
     With Election Day now down to just one month away, Nov. 5 – 30 days, to be exact – “So what?” is profound, because it’s the answer that matters.
     "So, what?" if there’s an election a month from now. Well, for one thing, it could mean whether American democracy will continue to evolve or will die – that’s what.
     "So what?" comes in two flavors. It can force us to considers how deeply we care about something; or it can be a thoughtless remark about to something that should matter.
     The question popped up recently in a legal filing by Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting criminal case Number 23-cr-257, “United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, defendant.”
     That’s the indictment  about Trump’s “scheme to overturn the 2020 election.”
     The legal memo recalls the chaotic events of Jan. 6, 2021, when rioters broke into the Capitol to halt Congress’s certification of the election. Enraged by a Trump Tweet criticizing Vice President Mike Pence for not cooperating with the scheme, the mob chanted for Pence’s death.
     “One minute later, the Secret Service was forced to evacuate Pence to a secure location in the Capitol,” the legal memo says.  An aide rushed to tell Trump what had happened, hoping he would protect  his vice president.
     Instead,  “the defendant looked at him and said only, ‘So what?’”

IN NORMAL TIMES, “So what?” can have an easy answer, as in the matter of Nibi, a beaver, who had been found two years ago as a kit, or infant, by the side of a Massachusetts road.
     Nibi was brought to a rehabilitation facility, which tried, but failed to have her bond with wild beavers.       

      Nibi, it turned out, preferred to hang around with humans, while enjoying her quarters at the refuge, which included a large enclosure and her own pond.  
     Alarms were raised when state wildlife officials declared Nibi had to be returned to the Massachusetts woodlands. Her caretakers feared she would not survive the winter.    

      As news reports spread word of the plight of furry little Nibi, the question of “So what?” played a major role in what would happen next.

BUT “SO WHAT?” becomes a more consequential question when Election Day is a month away.  The polls say the contest is a tie, while skeptics wonder whether it’s actually a landslide - but for whom?  

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      You’d think the answer would be a no-brainer.
     Trump not only tried to overthrow the election he lost to Joe Biden four years ago, he’s been convicted, and now awaits sentencing, for filing false business reports to hide hush payments to a porn star; and he’s facing two other cases, one about improperly taking government records and another about election skull drudgery.
     He was a terrible president for four years after his upset victory in 2016, but he retains a mystical connection with a cult-like base of voters, who shrug off his lies, his racism and his unhinged campaign orations. Adding to his mystique has been his survival of two assassination attempts, one in which a bullet grazed his ear.
     Trump’s only real accomplishment in the current campaign was watching Biden disintegrate on national TV during their only debate, which resulted in the president dropping out of the campaign, replaced as the Democratic nominee by Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris.
     Harris effortlessly took over the race, picked a charmingly down-home running mate in Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, stage-managed an enthusiastic national convention, and went on to demolish Trump in their only debate.
     "So what?"
     It would seem to be a no-contest choice.
     Harris, an energetic, 59-year-old former prosecutor, California attorney general and U.S. Senator and now a vice president; pragmatic, well-spoken, nimble, multi-racial, the epitome of someone ready to lead the country into an exciting new, chapter.
     Trump, 78, increasingly bitter, insulting, and spreading cruel lies at every campaign stop, with dark, authoritarian plans to deport millions of immigrants and turn the Department of Justice into the Department of Revenge to punish his enemies.

“SO WHAT?” haunts the election.
     We know a lot of people have answered: Trump’s devoted base remains loyal; and apparently, an equal number of Democrats and others alarmed by Trump, support Harris.
     It’s difficult to imagine in the election’s remaining days that very many minds can be changed.
     What’s more, there’s not as much time left as it seems, since voting has started in some states, either by mail ballot or in-person early voting. So many votes already are locked in.
     The Pew Research Center says that in the 2022 midterm elections, only 43 percent of voters waited until Election day; 36 percent cast mail ballots; 21 percent voted early.
     In the face of the stubbornness of Trump’s supporters and the dwindling time that’s left, I’m impressed at how hard people are working to elect Harris, and by the breadth of her support.
      Millions of people have donated money, volunteered to knock on doors and make phone calls and send post cards into the battleground states.
     I’m also encouraged in the way that some rock-solid Republicans like Liz Cheney, once the third highest leader in the House, have endorsed Harris. And the same goes for her father, Dick Cheney, the former vice president who once was the Democrats’ Darth Vader.
     Liz Cheney this week went a step further by campaigning with Harris in Ripon, Wisconsin, where the Republican Party got its start.    

KAMALA HARRIS, Democratic nominee for president, and Liz Cheney, arch Republican, on the same stage, united in their determination to defeat Donald Trump

     Cheney, who served on the House committee that investigated the 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, said:
     “Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice our Capitol, to allow law enforcement officers to be beaten and brutalized in his name, and to violate the law and the Constitution in order to seize power for himself.”
     “I don’t care if you are a Democrat or a Republican or an independent,” she said. “That is depravity, and we must never become numb to it.”
     Will all of this be enough?
     I have no idea – I swing back and forth between recurring daytime nightmares of a Trump return and late-night fantasies of the celebrations that would follow a Harris landslide.
    But more and more, the campaign certainly will come down to whether enough people reach deep within their souls for the answer to “So what?”

EPILOGUE
     If we don’t yet know the power of “So what?” in the election, we do know how it played out for Nibi, the abandoned beaver in Massachusetts.
     There’s nothing like a photogenic furry face, plus the talent of operators of a wildlife refuge for public relations, to stir the collective conscience.    

      As reports of Nibi’s life-and-death crisis spread, a lawsuit delayed Nibi’s return to the wilds of Massachusetts, and 25,000 people signed an on-line petition to support the beaver remaining at the only home she'd ever known.
     Next came a demonstration of government at its best – responding to the public’s (aka voters') “So what?” moment.
     Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey decreed that Nibi could remain at the Newhouse Wildlife Rescue refuge in Chelmsford, to enjoy her own enclosure and personal pool.
     Along with her reprieve, came an official assignment for Nibi.
     Healey said the beaver’s new duties would be “… to educate the public about this important species.”
     “So what?”
     It’s the positive thing that can happen when people of good will - and not the defendant, Donald J. Trump -  choose to answer one of life's most profound questions.