Beer Tears

After all the political tooting and hollering, we knew that following November 5th someone, either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump, would be shuttled into the White House by the U.S. Electoral College.

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Democrats have been thumping the drums to eliminate the Electoral College as a relic of days gone by. Of course, every day, including yesterday, is a day gone by. Only Satan and his fallen angels are permitted by common consent to treat history as “bunk” – a phrase Henry Ford cribbed from Satan himself. “History is bunk,” said Ford.

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Up-to-date neo-progressive Democrats believe gas powered Fords are bunk and should be dumped on the ash heap of history, to be replaced in a couple of decades by EVs, electric powered vehicles much too expensive to buy. Under certain conditions, EVs burst into unquenchable flames, and the infrastructure network supporting EVs, battery powering stations, remains sadly on the drawing boards.

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Two days before dependable election returns appeared early on the 5th, I was munching on an apple fritter at Dunkin Donuts in Coventry, slow-sipping my coffee and marking up a newspaper when – let’s agree to call him Mr. X – flashed by and whispered provocatively, “Trump’s gonna lose.”

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Rising to the occasion, the incurable contrarian in me whispered back, “He’s gonna win.”

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Mr. X, I should note, is a Trump supporter, but he enjoys bets and making sport of political commentators. We bet a dollar on the wager. Mr. X now owes me a dollar.

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The bright side is: He did not lose a bet to politicians who believe, or say they believe, that the nation’s $36 trillion deficit can be discharged by collecting taxes from millionaires’ unrealized profits. This absurd notion is pretty much like pouring out a glass of orange juice obtained from an orange pip. The thing cannot be done and, if it were attempted, unrealized gains on stock bets would disappear, according to Milton Friedman’s well-known imperishable proverb “Whatever you tax tends to disappear.”

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At 5:30 AM, one day after voters had returned a badly bruised Trump to the White House, The magisterial New York Times spit out the following headline: Trump Storms Back.

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Beer Tears followed in a separate story: “His Win Opens a New Era of Uncertainty for the Nation,” the lede to which may serve as a testimony to blind persistence: “Donald Trump played on fears of immigrants and economic anxiety to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris. He triumphed despite a criminal conviction [still under appeal], indictments, an assassin’s bullet, accusations of authoritarianism, and an unprecedented switch of his opponent.”

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And the figures are cry-in-your-beer-worthy: Trump won the presidency by 277 Electoral votes to Harris’ 224; Republicans won the U.S. Senate 51 to 42; Republicans won the House 196 to 176. “Of the counties with nearly complete results,” the Grey Lady intoned, “more than 90 percent shifted in favor of President Trump in 2024.” And the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel clinker: “Stocks Jump After Trump Clinches Election Win.”

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To top it all off, I’m a dollar richer, although Mr. X, I’m fairly certain, will rejoice in my new found wealth.