So, I’m in the finals at Wimbledon, up two sets to love against Novak Djokovic, who has once more secured the number one ranking in men’s tennis for the year. (Congratulations, Nole.)
In the third set, however, Nole comes roaring back. As he serves at 4-3, I halt play and, motioning to the umpire, announce, “You know what? Im good. Let’s just call it quits so I can hoist the trophy since I’m ahead and I’m sure I would’ve won had play continued anyway.”
LOL. Welcome to a sports metaphor for the 2020 presidential election, in which President Donald J. Trump has declared victory over former Vice President Joe Biden despite being behind in the electoral and popular vote count, with several key states — Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — still to report. (The Associated Press has called Arizona for Biden, although there are 450,000 more ballots being counted. Biden leads there, although his lead is diminishing. On the other hand, he has pulled ahead in Georgia, has increased his lead in Nevada and is surging in Pennsylvania, the Florida of the 2020 election..)
In the alternate universe that Trump spun Thursday at a news conference that was so lunatic that the major networks cut away from it, he was ahead on Election Night, so he automatically won. He doesn’t care about the mail-in ballots, because he told his followers they were fraudulent. (You know, like the fake virus.) Now he’s angry that the ballots that many voters used to avoid the coronavirus he failed to control are breaking for the Democrats. The irony abounds: Had he done a better job with the virus, people might not have felt the need to mail in their ballots or vote early, against him. Had he not demeaned mail-in votes, many of these would not be breaking Democratic.
As it is, they are and they must be counted, although not the naked ones, the hanging chads of the 2020 election. These are ballots that were mailed in return envelopes only without being “clothed” in their secrecy envelopes. They’ve been rejected by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
n the meantime, we can only wait. But as John Milton wrote in his poem “On His Blindness”: “They also serve who only stand and wait.”