"Unspecified Irregularities." Beautiful. Someone Is Watching, Too.

It's boilerplate Republican strategy: When you lose, delay the loss as long as you can and stall to find a reason to challenge it. Above all, don't go without kicking and screaming, even if you have to invent a reason to do so.

The Kentucky governor's election, held yesterday and won by Andy Beshear over the obstreperous Matt Levin, has taken a new, but rather predictable twist today. Bevin's challenging the election due to what his campaign has called "unspecified irregularities."

Classic. Invent a phrase that calls some kind of alarm to some kind of problem, scramble while trying to specify (which means inventing new phrases), and blame something or someone out of one's control.

In Kentucky, such a challenge hasn't happened since 1899. The solution? Why of course: let the legislature elect the next governor, a legislature that is thoroughly Republican. In any event, allow the office of governor to be vacant past the date of inauguration and leave everything up in the air and doubt its validity.

Someone is watching. Should the same thing happen to 45 in another year, he will unquestionably sow those seeds before the voting takes place--first to suppress the vote and get people to believe it won't do any good (as if, with the Russians involved and Mitch McConnell reluctant to take steps to shore that up, there isn't that attitude out there anyhow), and second, to give his lawyers enough time to come up with similar, if not exactly the same, phraseology to cast doubt upon results that don't look as if they'll be favoring him this time around.

Should that happen, with enough electoral votes in question, then obviously Congress would have step in and solve the issue, about the same way that it went in the Election of 1876. In that fiasco, three Southern states--South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida, totaling 19 votes--had their popular vote totals contested, not the least of which because the Democrat, Samuel Tilden, on first count had defeated the Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes, and held an 18-vote electoral lead with those three states to go. The votes of those three states would decide the presidency.

Corruption and shadiness were no strangers to that process nor our national government in those days, either. The previous eight years had produced the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, an excellent general but mediocre chief executive. Some of the members of his administration were ensnarled in more than one scandal in which public monies were compromised to the burgeoning railroad business, unquestionably the major non-partisan beneficiary of the Civil War. And both sides were still smarting from the cliff-hanger impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson in 1868.

In the meantime, the intense passion that Reconstruction had engendered had given way to making money off the railroads and land grabbing that accompanied them. The newly-formed Ku Klux Klan had, within six years of the end of the war, so dominated Southern life and intimidated blacks that Grant had to coax Congress into passing the Force Act and the Ku Klux Act, which allowed federal troops to either increase their presence in then-occupied ex-Confederate states, or to re-introduce them into states from which they had been withdrawn. Either way, the South's idea of a society had thoroughly re-taken race relations, from which some of our problems now stem. Had Reconstruction worked, it's unlikely that this would have taken place.

As it was, Reconstruction had become an embarrassing Republican sham, on a lip-service level only. They stopped caring. The blacks no longer mattered. Power did.

So the stage was set. The deal was cut. On March 3, 1877, the day before the next inauguration, Republicans and Democrats agreed that Hayes would get all of the remaining electoral votes left dangling, making Samuel Tilden the most ripped-off presidential candidate until Al Gore. In exchange, all the federal troops would be withdrawn from the ex-Confederate states, ending the era we know as Reconstruction and practically (though it took about another 20 years) obliterating black voting rights and securing Jim Crow segregation, especially in schools. (Don't think that blacks were treated all that much better in the North, either; Frederick Douglass perpetually spoke about that, and he was still around.)

I foresee a similar occurrence. But what would be the grand bargain that would either keep 45 in office, or provide for a 46? How about an actual wall on the southern border, in exchange for 45 stepping down? Hmmmmm? It's really all he ever wanted. But like the Republicans who stopped caring about the freed blacks, the Democrats would have to stop caring about those Central Americans who are fleeing intimidating circumstances in their countries. (And by the way: Where did the stories about the camps go? Or are we tired of hearing about them? Hmmmm?)

Remember: This is the self-declared Master of the Deal. What he is, is a master at saving his backside and letting everyone else hold the stinking bag. In fact, if by a long-shot impeachment fact-finding, about to open in public next week, begins to wear away at that magical 38 percent who worship him, he might find his way out with such an offer, step down, and let Mike Pence lead the holy hypocrites into the next decade.

It would begin with "unspecified irregularities," or some such phrase. It would end with democracy taking another swift kick in the pants. If so, we would have it coming.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark