Can we breathe yet:

(by D-Jay)

Is it really over?

Can we breathe yet?

Is it time to put the vodka and Scotch back in the cabinet and get some sleep?

Can we finally turn off the TV and walk the dog?

If we put on our mathematicians’ hats and look at the odds of Trump somehow coming back from the dead or overturning the count in any of the swing states, we would definitely think so…but when has anything as fact-based as math meant anything in the reign of King Donald?

If we donned judge’s robes and examined the likelihood of any of Trump’s legal challenges to the vote actually succeeding from the standpoint of the law, we would break out laughing…but has anything as prosaic as the rule of law meant to him or his coterie of con-men?

If we think about the possibility of Trump-loving state legislatures allowing themselves to put forward their own slates of electors instead of those chosen by the voters, we would learn that this is a right they would have apparently needed to have given themselves before the election…but when have such regulatory niceties meant anything to committed Trumpists?

If we look at the Constitution and the role it gives to Congress in the arcane American electoral process, we would see that, “The Twelfth Amendment gives Congress the power to choose the president or the vice president if no one receives a majority of Electoral College votes,” so from a Constitutional standpoint, they shouldn’t be able to do anything unless it’s a tie…but has Donald Trump ever even read our nation’s founding document?

If we head to our gun cabinets and wonder if it’s time to get out into the street with our AK-47s and body armor, we would have to admit that, in spite of the most dire predictions, no-one has started shooting yet and the crowds of pro-Trump protestors at the vote counting centers have actually been quite small. And fewer of them have come bearing arms than we might have expected…but who knows how much crazier Trump might get, and how his most die-hard followers might react.

If we listen to the “arguments” Trump is making about how the election was stolen from him, we would immediately find that they aren’t arguments at all, just fact-free rants expressing his own delusional view of the world as it’s seen from inside his head…but welcome to Trumplandia.  Have we seen anything else in the last four years?

My very big and very impatient dog, Leo, is barking loudly at me now.  He’s trying, it seems, to tell me, “Hey Dad!  It’s over. That guy is toast!  Do something more useful than watching that idiot on the TV and take me out for a nice long walk in the woods!” 

On the whole, I think he’s right. 

But…