America’s presidential election day, the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November, is next week. Where once this day represented the day voters actually went to the polls and cast their ballots this year more than every it is the termination day following weeks of voting and with luck and a motivated electorate, we may have the election’s resolution Tuesday.

If the election is close and with a number of states not counting their mailed in ballots until election day itself it could be days or even weeks before we know the outcome, notwithstanding other intruding events such as court challenges attempting to shut down vote counting early. One persistent fear is that of a ‘red mirage.’ Because supporters of the President are more likely to discount the dangers of the pandemic they had been telling pollsters that they plan to vote in person while Independent and Democratic voters have stated a clear preference for mailed ballots. This could lead to a situation where votes cast in person and reported election night favor Trump but are no reflective of the final result because mailed ballots have yet to be counted. However, if the turnout is high and the results are not close then the hazard of a red mirage is far less likely.

As of this writing 538’s average of national polls has Biden with a lead of 8.5 points and their election model is projecting his odds of winning at 88%, significantly better Hillary Clinton’s odds at this point last cycle.

I am still hoping and can see it is far from impossible that not only does Biden crush Trump is a 1980 style route but that the GOP suffers massive defeats at every level of government throughout the union.

Yesterday I gave you a number of reasons why the election in 2020 is not a repeat of 2016 with plenty of nuggets to raise your spirits and cool your fears. Today we are going in the other direction and I’m going to go over a few possibilities how this election could go wrong. And by go wrong I mean yield an illegitimate result. Trump is very unpopular and has a practically non-existent chance to win the popular vote and very slim chance, 13% as of today at 538, but we have more to fear this go around than another electoral misfire.

1) Who decides on the electors?

In our system we do not actually vote for president we vote for a slate of elector to represent our state at the electoral college who had promised to vote for our choice in the presidential contest. In some states it is not force of law that selects the electors and there is nothing legally from preventing a legislature from voting to send a slate of electors of their choosing. So, if Florida goes by a bare margin to trump thee governor and thee state legislature could simply choose to ignore the results and send a GOP slate delivering the state’s electoral college votes to Trump. If Trump is defeated soundly in a number of states this avenue of election rigging is closed off but if it comes down to a single state and the GOP control the state it is a possibility.

2) A Delay in Certifying the Electors.

If the election and the electors are not certified in time, then a state may not send their electors to the college to vote on the president. Such an outcome could make it impossible for any candidate to cross the 270 line in which case the selection of president would be made by the House of Representatives with each state having one vote. There has been reporting that the Trump campaign have been readying a large number of lawyers to contest elections and slate of electors in a number of states with the intention of not winning these legal challenges but consuming so much time that the electors cannot be certified and throwing the election to the house.

The Congress that would vote in the new president is the incoming class and there have also been reports that the Democrats under the leadership of their Speaker have been targeting particular House Seats with an eye focused on gaining control of a majority of state delegation in addition to their current majority in total members.

There are at the time of this writing 20 days until the United States Official Election day though people are voting now by mail and in person by way of early voting and the possibility remains that closer than expected contest may delay results by days or weeks.

As we approach the critical time for our republic and for the world many people are having tense fearful reactions to Biden lead in the polls recalling Clinton’s lead that evaporated and left the nation dealing with a narcissistic corrupt man-child at the head of our government. While the only poll that reallymatters is the actual vote tally here are a few reasons to keep in mind as to why 2020’s election is not the same as 2016’s.

1) Joe Biden is not as a reviled figure as Hillary Clinton.

Rightly or wrongly Clinton carried 30 years of negative political baggage creating a contest between two despised candidates. That dynamic is missing entirely.

2) Joe Biden is consistently breaking the 50% barrier in polling.

Hillary Clinton while often outpolling Trump rarely if ever managed to score above 50% in the polls and in the final weeks of the campaign remained below that critical measure.

3) There are no major third-party candidates.

In an election as tight as 2016 with the outcome turning on less than a few hundred thousand votes nationally the presence of third-party vote drainers such as Jill Stein proved critical.

4) 2016’s ‘unthinkable’ is our reality.

In 2016 is was commonly accepted wisdom that the electorate simply would not elect Trump as President. Despite 538’s giving Trump a 1 in 3 chance of emerging victorious people simply assumed it would not happen but in 2020 we have sadly been forced to accept that it can and that it did happen. Now no one dismisses Trump’s chances as ‘unthinkable.’

5) The polling has been unusually stable.

Look at the charts from 2016 and you’ll see wild gyrations in support for the two candidates but in 2020 the difference between Trump and Biden has been fluctuating over just a few points and never enough to cause the two to swap places. Biden’s lead has remained at 6-8 points for months.

6) Trump is no longer an unknown.

While Trump in 2016 possessed in some people’s mind at almost unknown potential as President in 2020 his qualities are well known. It is now plain to all but his core support that the erratic, ignorant, insulting, and racist style reflects who he truly is and now merely a ‘show.’

7) The Electorate is motivated.

Voter turnout in 2016 was depressed and Trump winning the election received a lower percentage of votes than Romney’s losing campaign in 2012 but in 2020 early voting, mail-in voting, and fund raising all indicated a high energized voting population on track to shatter all voter turnout records.

8) 207,557 dead Americans.

2016 did not provide the stark and undeniable reality of with candidates’ failure to manage a crisis such as COVID-19 has done for the Trump administration. From the face that Trump was aware of the deadly nature early and tried to ignore it, to the reports that the administration’s considers death’s in ‘Blue States’ unimportant Trump’s handling of the pandemic has demonstrated clearly, plainly, and lethally he is utterly unfit for the office and the price we will all pay if he remains in it.

All that said the most important thing is to VOTE. In person, early, or by mail, no poll matters but that one.

It would seem that nature, the fates, or God, which force is most prominent in your belief system, has taken a hand in springing an October Surprise into our Presidential election season by infecting President Trump with COVID-19.

It is very tempting to mock and jeer at this news.

Trump’s willful mismanagement of the crisis has left tens of thousands of American needlessly dead. While possessing just about 4% of the world’s population the United States account for about 20% of the pandemic’s death total.

Trump cruelty to those who he sees as his enemies invites other to retaliate with their own cruelty.

His mocking of others with afflictions makes the desire to mock his own nearly irresistible.

I cannot speak for other but for myself I am not Trump and I am a better person than he. I will not mock him. I will not delight in his misery. I will not wish for him a slow painful and terrifying death no matter how poetically ironic it would prove to be.

I will confess to a dark delight that I would love to see Trump survive and then endure a crushing defeat delivered by Team Biden.

I would love to see Biden’s electoral team roll that ‘crit’ and crush the GOP with 400 electoral vote victory. Which according to the projections from the Washington Post’s data nerds is about a 10% chance, making it more likely than a natural ‘crit’ in D&D.

I would love to see a Democratic Tide so high that it washes away Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnel, however unlikely such an outcome is. Only through such a crushing defeat could the GOP be forced to rebuild itself as the sort of respectable conservative party that would be immune to future Trumps and I want Trump to live to see that happen.

The New York Times has obtained tax returns for Donald Trump covering a number of years exposing his lies, both as a ‘businessman’ and as a citizen. For many the bombshell fact will be that for many years Trump paid zero, nothing at all, in Federal Income taxes and in fact at one point claimed a tax credit, that is not a deduction that reduced his obligation but a credit where the US Federal Government paid him nearly 73 million dollars, a credit that was quite possibly fraudulent and if the IRS audit, yes he actually is under an audit for this particular credit, finds he abused the system to claim this credit then he could, on this one point alone, owe more than 100 million in taxes and fines.

In addition to this, the absurd sums deducted as business expenses, such as 70,000 dollars in haircuts (Do you remember GOP outrage at President Clinton’s $200 haircut?) and the possibly illegal nearly $800,000 ‘consulting fees’ paid to his daughter Ivanka, and the 400 Million dollars in debt coming due between now and 2024, that is during his second term should he pull off another electoral college victory, we need to remember his other financial shenanigans, the proven fraud of his non-profit foundation which the Trump’s used as a shell to hide money and their own personal piggy bank, and the dubious and secretive financial dealing with foreign powers.

But these frauds and tax schemes of Trump’s is not the larger scandal.

The larger, structural scandal is that so much of what Trump does is standard operating procedure for the massively wealthy. Wealth has captured the regulatory state and while the GOP slashes and burns their way through environmental regulations in the name of business and profit the wealthy dive through loops holes escaping what little tax burden the law does require of them. Until Trump leaped into the hot glare of presidential politics much of this, certainly his non-profit foundation scams, would have escape justice but he is far from the only one.

Should the Democratic Party regain the levers of power they should use this outrage to launch a new era of accountability for the wealthy and make false the bragging of one Leona Helmsley that, ‘We don’t pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes.’