CSotD: The Morning After

Oh well.

Wiley anticipated the outcome of yesterday’s vote with a Non Sequitur (AMS) that didn’t try to predict the winner but just observed that the Electoral College count doesn’t reflect the popular vote.

There have been several cartoons over the past weeks suggesting we abandon the Electoral College and I think it’s a remnant of a much smaller nation with a much narrower electorate, as well as the problem of slave states that dictated several compromises in the first century of our nation.

Howsoever, as I’m writing this at 5 a.m., Trump has both the Electoral College and the popular vote in hand, which sure doesn’t leave Harris folks a whole lot to complain about.

French cartoonist Philippe Pil Serrette posted this commentary two days ago, so he was commenting on the rise of fascism in America but not specifically on its actual rise to power. I suppose, however, that Trump’s (apparent) victory is the result of the fact that his transparent leanings were not just forgivable but attractive.

Note that Serrette gets the generations right: The son of the WWII vet has a bowl cut that is seen in his adult form, and it’s his son who takes up the cause his grandfather fought to defeat.

He does a nice job of telling the story without using language, which is not the usual approach by Continental cartoonists, who tend to draw metaphorical statements, which don’t require translation, rather than narrative pieces.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Channel, Jeremy Banx posted this piece before the elections here, and I got one final laugh out of the idea of the “undecided voter.”

As I’ve written before, I think claiming to be undecided is a bluff to cover a lack of engagement and understanding, so Banx got a chuckle out of the notion that this knucklehead would actually show up at the polls, even if he was too late.

As for reflecting the results, Clay Jones did a live blog throughout the evening, doing several reactions as things went on, of which this is my favorite, but you can see the rest here.

The plans these Puritans outline seem unlikely to fail, given that the GOP has taken the Senate and is closing in on the House. I don’t think Trump’s cockamamie tariffs will get past the 13th Amendment, but I have half a dozen granddaughters and a great-granddaughter to think of. Thank god we didn’t ditch the Senate’s filibuster rule.

Jones is a frequent flyer here, partly because I tend to agree with his take on things, but the main reason is that he produces a cartoon every day. I don’t feature everything he does and I don’t always agree with him, but, as Woody Allen said, “Showing up is 80 percent of life.”

Allen later modified his quote to say it was 80 percent of success, but that’s largely a distinction without a difference. He was criticizing people who want to write something but just talk about doing it instead.

Jones was the Yank I came across in my perusals this morning and he’s got an excellent track record of showing up, even if you don’t think he hits the target 80 percent of the time.

Some of his presence, granted, is because he’s self-syndicating and doesn’t have to rely on anyone else’s distribution system. But the major part of it is because he keeps drawing things.

I’m sure there will be more American reactions in the days to come, but they’re gonna have to be really good to make up for the fact that the iron is hot this morning.

Juxtaposition of David Rowe

I count on David Rowe to provide overnight service on breaking news, and he didn’t disappoint with this grim portrait of America getting a good look at itself in the mirror.

Uncle Sam is depressed and Liberty is shocked but there it is: Both the popular and the Electoral College votes are an adequate, eloquent statement of who we are.

We spent weeks denying the polls and asking “How can it possibly be this close?”

Well, look in the mirror.

Rowe then followed up with this piece, which certainly indicates his contempt for Dear Leader, but again puts Trump in a place that forces us to own him. There will be all sorts of discussions about how it happened and why it happened and how my goodness it certainly doesn’t reflect who we are.

Except there he is, and, yes, he’ll now pardon himself for his federal doings and will go to his pals on the Supreme Court to argue that they have already put him above all those state laws, too, and that sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll was done in his official capacity as president even though it happened about a quarter century before he was elected.

Point being that we knew who he was and we voted him into office anyway. That’s who we are, whether we knew it or not. Numbers don’t lie.

And please don’t say you were surprised. Rowe depicted our surprise back in 2016, when we genuinely were surprised.

Giulio Laurenzi (Cartoon Movement) indicates who he thinks won the election, and he could be right.

I worry about the effect of a Trump presidency and a GOP congress on my granddaughters, but the impact on Ukraine seems more immediate and irreversible. It’s one thing to be able to filibuster legislation, but you can’t block something that hasn’t been proposed, and not funding aid to Ukraine seems inevitable, unless a few Republicans show some independence.

And let’s not forget that, while Harris’s talks with Netanyahu have verged on being a confrontation, Trump has promised to encourage him to “finish the job,” which, if he does, suggests that our next president may not have Gaza to deal with.

The oddity in all this being that Trump and his cohorts kept calling Harris a communist and a socialist, neither of which she was and neither of which they could define.

But we’ve known that the “Russia Hoax” was no hoax since the Helsinki meeting in 2018.

It’s been a long time since conservatives shouted “Go back to Russia!” at demonstrators. They don’t have to anymore.

Russia’s coming here, thanks to the so-called “Party of Lincoln.”