The so-called Million MAGA March in Washington this weekend drew only four or five thousand Trumpsters, which on a math basis means attendance was off by a factor of at least 200 from the stated goal. It was yet another symbol of the desperation of a candidate (and his rabid cult members) who won’t admit that he lost.
That got me thinking of a sports analogy.
Every Monday, hours of sports radio and ESPN shows are consumed by hosts arguing about the NFL games of the day before. Some of it’s about strategy. Some of it’s about whether a certain coach should be fired because his team lost again. But many of those discussions come down to, “If the refs hadn’t screwed us on that one call…” or “If he hadn’t fumbled at the six, we would have scored and won!” or “He didn’t look in bounds to me!”
Here’s another analogy from a different sport. You know all those times a baseball manager ran out of the dugout, turned his hat around, and screamed in the face of an umpire while kicking dirt on his shoes (see “Weaver, Earl”)? How’d that work out?
It occurs to me that what Trump and his acolytes have been lying about since Joe Biden won the election falls into the same category of whining. In fact, it’s worse, because Trump and his incompetent legal team don’t even have a good basis for their claims, which is why they keep getting denied by judge after judge.
But here’s the important thing to remember: never in the history of the NFL has the final score of a game been changed based on arguments made after it was over. Never.
To my knowledge, no baseball umpire (in the pre-instant-replay era) ever listened to a spittle-spewing skipper and replied, “You know what? That’s a good point. I hadn’t thought of that! He’s out!” Nor has the commissioner’s office ever overturned a walk-off home run and reversed a W into an L.
That’s not going to happen with the presidential election, either.
For reference, if you want to know what it looks like when a million people gather on The Mall in DC, just glance back at photos of Obama’s first inauguration.
And if you want to know what a quarter-million people look like, just check the morgues, cemeteries, and crematoriums that have been filled with Americans who have died from The Trump Virus in the last eight months.