This observer assumes Joe Biden will take the oath of office on January 20th 2021. We’re no lawyer, but after the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s Pennsylvania brief 9-0, we’re not optimistic about his chances. Now Texas has sued Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to prevent them from awarding their combined 62 electoral votes to Biden. Seventeen states, including Florida, have joined the suit. To put it another way, one third of the states including the 2nd and 3rd most populist states in the union think the election was illegitimate. This is legal civil war. Time is not on their side though, as the Electoral College meets December 14th.
At the same time Covid-19 ravages anti-lockdown red states like Texas and Florida, and pro-lockdown blue states like California and New York. Here in New Jersey the state averages more than 5,000 new cases a day. The death rate rises too, though not at last spring’s pace. Tiny revolts have broken out in the tri-state-area as small businesses on the brink say they have no choice but to open in defiance of gubernatorial directives. The state meets resistance in other ways. New Jersey governor Phil Murphy says ‘the rate of noncooperation with our contact tracers is now up to a whopping 74% of cases. Quite frankly, this is unacceptable and we need folks to turn that around.’ Decorum prevents this New Jersey man from saying what he thinks of that. The virus has become a cultural issue as well. White collar workers, this writer included, have jobs easily done from home. Of course, blue collar and service industry workers cannot say the same and they're protesting lockdowns rules seemingly put in place by people who are collecting a paycheck.
Americans fight over movies too, the latest battleground being Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy. This is the film adaptation of J.D. Vance’s memoir of the same name about growing up poor in Appalachia and Rust Belt Ohio. These are Hillary’s deplorables, Obama’s bitter clingers. After graduating high school, Vance joined the Marines, put himself through college on the GI Bill and graduated from Harvard Law. On the film rating aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes fans give Hillbilly Elegy a score of 85% fresh, which seems about right to this reviewer. But critics have rated the film only 26% fresh, In fact, bi-costal critics loath Hillbilly Elegy. Sarah Jones wrote in the leftwing Vulture ‘the memoir the movie is based on filters J.D. Vance’s personal experiences through right-wing tropes about poverty and social collapse.’ A piece in the left-wing Washington Post claimed Hillbilly Elegy spouted ‘common GOP talking points — prioritizing personal responsibility over community care.’ While Vance does make some political observations in his memoir, director Ron Howard smartly leaves politics out of the film. Hillbilly Elegy has nothing to say about the welfare state or even Trump. Leftwing critics are projecting their own biases onto a film that isn’t about them at all.
The culture war has moved to venues once thought out of bounds, like Fox News. For 25 years Fox has billed itself as the alternative to leftwing cable news, ‘We report, you decide,’ they said. By 2001, Fox was first in the cable news ratings, and would remain in first until this November. Fox’s actions this election have enraged its viewers. Host Chris Wallace openly took Joe Biden’s side during the first presidential debate. On election night Fox called Arizona for Biden before hundreds of thousands of ballots were counted and insisted for weeks that the Democrats would gain seats in the House of Representatives. As of this writing the GOP has gained 11 seats. Throughout November Fox hosts mocked Trump’s election fraud claims and one host was caught on a hot mic saying ‘We called it’ as if the Constitution says the media determines who wins an election. These incidents and hundreds of others, seen as anti-Trump by conservatives, have led to a ratings collapse. Conservatives have turned to Fox news alternatives like One America News Network and Newsmax. During the week of November leftwing MSNBC surpassed Fox in total daytime and primetime viewers. This Monday, for the first time, Newsmax beat Fox in the key 25-54 old viewer demographic.
Meanwhile the Republican party is sorting itself out, post-Trump, if there is a post-Trump. Here the culture war is between the GOP Establishment and the base. The Establishment would like to move on, but the president has every reason to run in 2024, and much to the dismay of the GOP establishment, would be the frontrunner in the Republican primary. Whether or not sitting GOP politicians supported Trump during the election’s litigation phase will be issue number one for the faithful going forward. Lukewarm supporters of the president like Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State George Raffensberger should expect primary challengers in 2022. With runoff senate elections looming on January 5th Georgia is the center of the political universe. Many Trump voters are mad at Kemp an Raffensberger and are wondering if they should even bother voting. The president held a rally for both GOP senate candidates’ last weekend to turnout the base. There is probably no reclaiming the party from the ranks of the Deplorables, they are the GOP’s future.
