Selling rope

If you live in a world where everyone wants to hang you, don’t open a store at the center of town that sells rope by the foot.

Do you know who said that? Me. Just now. I googled it to make sure I wasn’t stealing someone else’s clever line and it turns out in the history of mankind, nobody has ever used that analogy before so from this day forward it belongs to me.

Putting my mildly clever prose aside, let’s talk about why I thought of that phrase in the first place. In a word; Trump. Since the day he came down the escalator at Trump Tower many years ago, everything has been stacked against the man. And I know, I know, he brings lots of the pain and attention on himself but my point is he knows the media, Hollywood, academia and about 18 solidly blue states can’t stand him.

Still, he has gone out of his way to hand them the rope by which they have been trying to hang his political career. And it now it seems the inevitable has happened, his political future is toast.

I know he still has legal cases pending but it seems unlikely he can win a war he is fighting on so many fronts in somany states. Was their election fraud? Yes. Is there always election fraud? Yes. Is it usually this blatant? Probably not. Does it matter that dead people seemed to be voting in record numbers (excluding Chicago in 1960)? I doubt it.

I would never tell a man to give up or not fight for what he believes is right so the president’s legal cases will continue on until a higher court, perhaps the highest of them all, steps in andmakes a definitive ruling. But make no mistake for most Republicans and Democrats, these lawsuits are no longer about Donald Trump. Mass mail-in ballots clearly helped democratic candidates so if I were a Democrat, I’d be pushing very hard to make the changes we blamed on Covid a permanent fixture.

I’ve listened to both sides and you have one group saying everyone should vote on Election Day, period, while the otherwants us to have a lengthy process that extends weeks and allows anyone who wants to mail in their vote. I’m always a fan of compromise so I think the solution going forwardwould be a four-day voting weekend.

Think about it. Voting in person starts the Saturday morning before ElectionDay and you have four days to get your lazy buns off the couch and to the polls. If you have a legitimate reason why you can’t vote in person, you can then request a ballot, fill it out and mail it in. I amnot a fan of mailing out blank ballots to a list of names on a long voter registration sheet, this just invites fraud and not just for democrats.

Republicans as well can take out a sharpie and color in a name for someonewho moved away six months ago.

I also think if we are going to allowmoremail-in ballots you have to allowpeople to start counting them before Election Day and sealing the results in an envelope until you are ready to count them. Having a place like Pennsylvania try to count up a million ballots in a few locations makes it very easy for someone to cheat and slip in ballots that aren’t postmarked or signed.

Who would notice when you are so overwhelmed?

There are a lot of “Never Trump” Republicans out there who can’t stand theman but they should be cheering him on as he pushes to show fraud in these states. Even if he loses, which seems likely, if President Trump can showthe massive mail-in voting is ripe for fraud, it won’t stop the moving van from coming to Pennsylvania Avenue but it may slow down this push for a progressive freefor-all election process.

Of course, it is also a risky proposition because if at the end of all the counting and investigating, if we find all the screaming about massive voter fraud is as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny, that would only validate the push for all of us to mail in our votes.

One last thought about this election. Should Donald Trump lose his job, he’ll certainly have company. By that I mean the media. Trump has been a gift to every cable channel, especially CNN, giving them fresh meat to snarl and chew on every day. Oh, and those 90minute press conferences where he stands there and bats back their attacks?

Yeah, those will be history. I watched Joe Biden’s first press briefing after announcing he won and it was difficult not to nod off. Trump, for all his faults, was must see TV. Don’t be surprised after all the highfives at CNN, if you don’t see pink slips by early spring when they realize the circus has left town and there is no longer any reason to watch.

John Gray is a news anchor on WXXA-Fox TV 23 and ABC’S WTEN News Channel 10. His column is published every Sunday. Email him at johngray@fox23news.com.