Clarity. And A ‘Good Deal Of Confusion’

On Saturday, Americans had some measure of clarity on the two most important issues facing the country: The election and a COVID-19 vaccine.

And yet, in many respects, clarity and finality will remain elusive for the foreseeable future.

The Supreme Court on Friday evening effectively put an end to Donald Trump’s efforts to override voters, who, as you may have heard, elected Joe Biden last month. The order rejecting Texas’s high-profile lawsuit was appropriately terse. “The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution,” the high court said. “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.”

In September, following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump infamously declared that, in his view, the election “will end up in the Supreme Court.” “And I think it’s very important that we have nine justices,” he added.

But Trump’s implicit assumption (and “implicit” is me being very generous) that Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett would be willing to countenance what, for lack of a better way to describe the situation, was an unfathomably brazen attempt to reverse an election outcome, proved woefully misguided.

Justices Alito and Thomas added what amounted to a technical footnote. “In my view, we do not have discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction [so] I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief, and I express no view on any other issue,” Alito wrote, joined by Thomas.

Trump took to Twitter, as is his wont. I’ve generally eschewed coverage of the president’s post-election balderdash, but I’d be remiss not to at least note that he has now abandoned any pretense of reverence for the country’s institutions. The Supreme Court, which was stacked by, and arguably for, Trump, found itself on the receiving end of the same kind of rhetoric deployed against all manner of “enemies,” real and imagined, over the past four years.

“The Supreme Court really let us down. No Wisdom, No Courage!,” Trump exclaimed on Friday evening. By Saturday morning, he was more aggressive. “The Supreme Court had ZERO interest in the merits of the greatest voter fraud ever perpetrated on the United States of America,” he declared.

As The New York Times reminds you, “more than 100 House Republicans fell in line to claim that the general election – the same one in which most of them were re-elected – had been ‘riddled with an unprecedented number of serious allegations of fraud and irregularities,’ [while] more than a dozen Republican state attorneys general expressed similar support.”

There is no evidence to support those allegations. When you cut through the noise and just get right down to the facts or, if you like, to the question of whether it’s possible that “fraud” tipped the election in favor of Biden, the answer is “no.” William Barr, who has invested quite a bit into protecting the president at considerable risk to himself, said as much earlier this month. Now he too is a target for Trump on Twitter. “IF Biden gets in, nothing will happen to Hunter or Joe. Barr will do nothing, and the new group of partisan killers coming in will quickly kill it all,” Trump said Saturday.

I don’t think it’s particularly fruitful (or healthy) to entertain this subject much further, but on Saturday, Trump appeared poised to stoke social unrest. At the same time, his campaign is now set to run ads perpetuating the idea that he is the rightful president. It’s possible he intends to run those ads even after the results are made official. That is: It now seems likely that the sitting President of the United States will refuse to recognize the election result for the duration of the transition period, and will persist in flooding the internet with claims that were rejected (in one way or another) by every court in America, including the Supreme Court. “We have just begun to fight!,” Trump said, in a separate, all-caps tweet.

Meanwhile, the FDA cleared Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, which means nearly three million doses are on their way to all 50 states. The first inoculations will be given by Monday.

This was, of course, expected. And it came after a day of controversy including reports that Mark Meadows told FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn to resign if the agency didn’t approve the shot by Friday evening. Hahn dutifully called that an “untrue representation” of a phone call with Meadows. “The FDA was encouraged to continue working expeditiously,” he said, in a statement. You can draw your own conclusions on that.

While approval is quite obviously good news, there are myriad logistical hurdles, all of which most readers are likely familiar with. Most obviously, Pfizer’s shot must be stored at -94 degrees Fahrenheit, and the storage cases can be opened just twice per day. On top of that, states and local governments are resource-constrained both in their capacity to administer the vaccine and to track the people who receive the initial injection, a crucial piece of the puzzle considering you need a second shot three weeks after the first one.

Those are just some of the supply-side issues. On the demand side, the problem remains the same — namely, convincing a skeptical public to get vaccinated. You can read more on that in “Vaccine Push Faces Test In America, Where ‘Freedom’ Is ‘The Gateway Drug To Pseudoscience’,” but suffice to say the problem is multifaceted, plagued by partisanship and conspiracy theories, much like the election.

In a piece published Saturday, the Times details the steps taken to facilitate distribution. I won’t recount them all here, but the takeaway, from the Times, is that “for all the planning, and contingencies, there is still a good deal of confusion.”

And that really sums up the situation America finds itself in as the most turbulent year in decades comes to a close. Again: “For all the planning, and contingencies, there is still a good deal of confusion.”


 

Leave a Reply to Mr. ImperfectCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

3 thoughts on “Clarity. And A ‘Good Deal Of Confusion’

  1. If, after January 20, Trump continues to promote libelous, seditious theories about election fraud, Facebook and Twitter must, absolutely must, ban him from their respective platforms

  2. Hopefully, once medical providers and the 3 million living in nursing homes/long term care facilities are vaccinated- the number of deaths and the strain on the hospitals goes down significantly. This would allow safer “reopening”- maybe March- even if we still have a large number of citizens (who are at low risk of serious illness, need for hospitalization or death) who still need a vaccine at that point.

  3. Here in Blue state Colorado, surrounded on 3 sides by red states, social controls mandated by the government have successfully bent the most important curve of all, reducing hospitilizations. Hospitals are still close to capacity and did stop accepting patients from other states. However with social controls and vaccines the situation should turn around very fast, even before all the nursing home people are vaccinated. Hospitals can then resuming accepting out of state patients and helping relieve the burden on those Red States around us.

NEWSROOM crewneck & prints