The further to the left or the right you move, the more your lens on life distorts.

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Ad-In

When I was younger, I played on a 4.5 USTA league tennis team. Our team won the local championship, went on the the states and then the regionals.  In the doubles match in the regional finals against a team from RI, we split the first two sets and then played to 6-6 in the third. Oh, BTW, the teams were supposed to be honorable and call the lines, there was no umpire or line judge. It was 6-5 in a tie breaker (ad-in), my serve. 

If we win the point, our team goes on to the national championships. I served to the T (up the middle) for a clean ace. The ball was in by an inch in both directions, close, but unquestionably in. Spectators agreed. The RI team called it out. My partner and I argued, then called an official, who listened, but then asked that we play the point over.

"No," I argued. "The serve was good. The match is over." 

Even though I think he sensed that our opponents cheated, the official cited the rules when disagreement about a line call occurred and said that we had to play the point over. He was hesitant to declare one team a victor. We lost 8-6 in the breaker. Our team did not go the the nationals, RI did.

I refused to shake my opponents' hands, thereby refusing to concede. And even with the wisdom of years, I would do the same thing today.

I know it's an old-school sentiment, but there should be a certain honor to competition—the recognition that an opponent has as much right to win as you do. But also the hard and fast rule that you never cheat, never.

* * * * * * * *

For the most part, I do believe that our recent election was conducted fairly. There were certainly isolated instances of irregularity, but overall the vote was fair. But where it really mattered, in a select number of blue cities in battleground states, I cannot state with certainty that the election was conducted fairly, that the "hard and fast rule that you never cheat, never" was followed by local officials.

With tongue planted firmly in his cheek, J.B. Shurk writes:

Candidate Joe Biden was so effective at animating voters in 2020 that he received a record number of votes, more than 15 million more than Barack Obama received in his re-election of 2012. Amazingly, he managed to secure victory while also losing in almost every bellwether county across the country. No presidential candidate has been capable of such electoral jujitsu until now.

While Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 totals in every urban county in the United States, he outperformed her in the metropolitan areas of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Even more surprising, the former VP put up a record haul of votes, despite Democrats’ general failures in local House and state legislative seats across the nation.

He accomplished all this after receiving a record low share of the primary vote compared to his Republican opponent heading into the general election. Clearly, these are tremendous and unexpected achievements that would normally receive sophisticated analysis from the journalist class but have somehow gone mostly unmentioned during the celebrations at news studios in New York City and Washington, D.C.

The massive national political realignment now taking place may be one source of these surprising upsets. Yet still, to have pulled so many rabbits out of his hat like this, nobody can deny that Biden is a first-rate campaigner and politician, the likes of which America has never before seen. Let’s break down just how unique his political voodoo has been in 2020 ...

Shurk goes on to discuss more specific anomalies, red flags, and hard data that indicate the "miracle" of Bidens' win. Amazing things like:

Proving how sharp his political instincts are, the former VP managed to gather a record number of votes while consistently trailing President Trump in measures of voter enthusiasm. Biden was so savvy that he motivated voters unenthusiastic about his campaign to vote for him in record numbers. 

Julie Kelly notes another out of PA: 

Roughy 2.5 million Pennsylanians voted absentee in the general election; nearly 2 million of those votes were cast for Joe Biden. One analysis found rejection rates for  Pennsylvania mail-in ballots was 30 times lower this year compared to 2016.

That's odd, but yet another indicator of the Biden "miracle." 

But all of the anomalies, red flags, and hard data don't matter, dismissed by a media that has given new meaning to the word 'gaslighting,' and enabled by courts that are understandably hesitant to negate an election.

The Dems understood these realities and called the serve "out," and the server didn't even get a do-over. The rest is (tainted) history.