All the numbers and demographics are moving against Republicans and have for years.  They have clung to power by tilting the field in their favor with gerrymandering and voter suppression using harsh voter ID laws, moving and closing polling locations, shortening early voting periods, making ballots confusing, and sending out deceptive campaign materials that are designed to keep voters off balance.  Recently Trump has taken use of the mass voter rally and raised it to an art form; those rallies are dutifully covered by the media that always amplify it to make it look bigger than it is.  The Republicans have always out maneuvered Democrats on virtually every front, legal and illegal.

So, think about what could be an equalizer that could blunt most of these tactics.  Something that would threaten not just one side, but both sides, something that doesn’t care if you’re a Democrat or Republican, Social Democrat or Trumpist.  Enter the Coronavirus that is rapidly becoming a global pandemic and growing very quickly in the US accelerated by Trump’s incompetent and incoherent early response to the threat.  The resulting condition called COVID-19 is life threatening to some and contagious, passed by human to human exposure.  One of the greatest tools that we have now to fight it is social distancing. Add to that the fact that development of a distributable vaccine will not occur until AFTER the election.  So, as we go deeper into the year, the threat is growing, not getting better.

What does all this mean?  It means that it’s very likely that there will be no in person campaigning, no rallies, no in person voting including early voting.  It means that, in order to have an election, the entire country must use remote voting online or by mail.  By far the safest is online, and the next best is mail in ballot.  Three states vote exclusively by mail, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado.  Republicans HATE remote voting because that vote is much more difficult to suppress, so only states that have balanced or Democratic government control are the ones that have converted to remote voting.  Online makes the most sense and can be secured; today I bank online, shop for groceries online, even buy our tea and coffee online.  I can send money almost anywhere in the world online.  Surely, we can develop a secure way to vote online.  Short of that, though, voting by mail works and is being used today.

So, for the first time, Republicans are facing the exact same obstacle to voting that Democrats are facing.  The Coronavirus can’t tell who you support for President and doesn’t care.  In the face of a national election where their candidate is weak (and nuts), they know that the election is very tight or even a loser for them; that’s why they’ve refused to improve voter security and continued to restrict access to voting.  Suddenly, THEY are facing a voter suppression threat that they didn’t create and can’t control.  Will the Coronavirus threat to Republicans finally be the tipping point where they will be forced to make voting more fair and by mail or online?  I can only hope so, and they better get off their asses and get to work on it.

Short of Trump trying to cancel or delay the election, remote voting is the only answer to make the election happen on time and according to the Constitution.  Could it actually be a global health threat that helps repair a broken system?  The irony would be sweet.

Some of our Salon customers believe I’m a conspiracy theorist, so to fuel that conclusion here’s another one.  Hear me out…There have been rumors flying around for over a year that Trump was going to replace Pantywaist Pence with Nikki Haley.  That’s been fed by weird tweets from Haley herself and recently commentary by Paul Begala predicting Trump is going to do just that.  Everyone in Trumpworld has been lamely trying to slap that one down, but I’ve never been convinced that Trump is NOT going to take Pence out.

It’s no secret that Pence is a toad of the first order, adding no political capital to Trump’s dwindling account.  He’s a Yes Man of the worst order, complete with his longing looks of Trump adoration and his aggrieved voice whenever he’s burdened with explaining Trump’s latest soiling of the carpets in the WH.  Now, Trump has put him in charge of the Coronavirus response, a job that he is totally unsuited (not to mention unqualified) for.  Pence’s response so far has been predictably awful, from mixed messaging to photos of a room full of white men deciding the fates of over 300 million Americans.  The effort is going to fail, and, in fact, has probably already failed.  There is almost certainly going to be an rapid increase in cases and bad news of larger outbreaks.  When that happens, guess who’s going to be the patsy?  That’s right, Mike Pence.  Trump will have “no choice” but to remove him as VP for incompetence and get a more “beautiful” and “fantastic” and “best qualified ever” candidate which will just so happen to be Haley.  It will be a cynical effort to save his suburban mom voting block.

Call me crazy…

The NY Times is reporting that Bloomberg just dropped out of the race.  Super Tuesday proved to be anything but super, and apparently he paid something like $11 million for each of his votes and for bragging rights in American Samoa.  NOW we have a race.

In Harris County yesterday, lines of voters were long and the wait was up to 5 hours.  Why?  There are two primary reasons:

• Since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act Texas has closed 542 polling places, most in historically black and Latino areas.  If you include 2012 closings, that number rises to 750.
• In Harris County at least, the Republican party refused to allow a joint primary with Dems.  What that meant was that the voting machines were divided in 2, half for Repubs, half for Dems.  Since Trump essentially had no opponent, turnout in the GOP primary was very low so HALF of voting machines remained essentially unused.

Both of these moves by Republicans made it harder for Texans to vote, which has been their goal for over 20 years as demographics started moving against them.  I got to experience their strategy yesterday since my polling place was one of those closed.  It took me three attempts at two different polling places to finally cast my vote, and I had to drive 15 minutes from one polling place to another to accomplish that.  After discovering my polling place was closed, I drove to my old polling place only to find the line out the door and down the block. I went to have some lunch and returned about an hour later to find the line almost as long.  A nice young poll worker for Ben Rose had information on other polling places, so I drove all the way out to Buffalo Speedway to vote at a church there.  The line there was about half an hour (and it was air-conditioned) so I waited it out.  When I got into the polling place, HALF of the voting machines were being unused while Republican poll workers twiddled their thumbs.  On the other side, Dems were forced to wait in multiple lines to access the other half.  Total time not including lunch was about two hours of waiting and a lot of driving just to vote in a goddam primary.

It’s shameful that the Republican party has been allowed to continuously and increasingly restrict access to the Constitutional right to vote.  Their rationale, of course, is based on lies since their actual goal is voter suppression not “election integrity” which is one of their standard lies.  Texas Republicans are perfectly happy to make the lives of their fellow Texans miserable simply for political gain.  This reason alone should be enough to vote the bastards out.

Sources are saying that Bloomberg is rethinking his run after his poor showing tonight.  I also expect Warren to finally throw in the towel.  About time.