Long-time NFL Coach Vince Lombardi liked to point out that football is not a contact sport. “Dancing is a contact sport,” he famously said, “but football is a collision sport.” I mention this metaphor because it accurately describes the game of predicting political outcomes – particularly when those outcomes really occur, despite all sane and reasonable predictions to the contrary.
With the 2024 election now in the books, and the most outrageous prediction of all having come true, it seems timely to predict some other events that could (and probably should) occur in the near or longer term. Following our usual custom, we offer fainting couches and fanning services to readers of delicate dispositions.
“Hie thee to a nunnery.” To help her deal with despondency and depression over her shocking election loss, former Vice-president Kamala Harris applies to a convent in northern Minnesota for emergency refuge. But the resident Reverend Mother regretfully denies her request, noting that giggling, laughing, or merriment of any kind is strictly forbidden by their order. “We doubt that you could comply with these rules,” she writes in her letter of refusal. “Instead, we recommend that a position with a vaudevillian-revival company would be more suitable.” Following that advice, Ms. Harris takes a job as top banana-ette in a touring vaudeville company. But she quits that job after being injured by a rotten cantaloupe thrown from a California audience.
Deportation Uproar. Acting on President Trump’s promise to deport millions of illegals, investigators reveal that five U. S. representatives and four state governors – all Democrats – appear to lack USA citizenship credentials. The resultant media uproar promotes formation of a joint House/Senate committee to investigate the non-citizenship claims of these politicians. Two of those possibly illegal representatives are later arrested as members of a gang that is attempting to break into the grounds of the White House. A ruckus also erupts in the main chamber of the House of Representatives, when spectators in the gallery, shouting “traitors!” and other rude epithets, hurl pies, vegetables and rubbish onto the members. Capitol Police later find that ushers allowed disrupters carrying parcels of pies and vegetables to enter the gallery. No injuries result, but several House members are seen carrying pies and vegetables from the chamber. “Waste not, want not,” says one member on his way out. “What’s more American than apple pie?”
Cancellation. The hullabaloo over the possibly alien politicians produces a revival of the controversy over Barack Obama’s citizenship that was raised by Donald Trump in 2008 and ’09. Mr. Trump had claimed that Mr. Obama was ineligible to become president because he was not born in the USA. The charge was withdrawn after the Obama camp released a copy of a Hawaiian birth certificate. But in the new deportation climate, a faction arises to insist that the Obama birth certificate was a fake and that the Obama presidency was therefore illegitimate. Lawyers in that faction bring suit to the Supreme Court asking that any legislation signed by Mr. Obama must be negated.
Come and Get Me Copper! Crowds of demonstrators shouting “Boot him out!” gather outside the Obama mansion in Washington, DC – causing the former president to barricade himself in his study. From there his only communications to the outside are occasional snarls of “You dirty rats!” and “Come and get me, copper!” – delivered by megaphone. Finally, some Hollywood film magnates gain entry to the house to offer Mr. Obama a movie contract for a lead role in remakes of several 1930s James Cagney films. One director tells reporters that no one has delivered a Cagney impression that good since Cagney himself. He adds that the time also seems right for a black Cagney. “He’ll be perfect in the part,” says the director. “All he needs to do is be himself. No need to act.” Police restrain the crowd as the Hollywood coterie drives the new film idol away in their 1941 Buick limousine.
Just Warming Up. Former governor and recent vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz announces that he will run for the presidency in 2028 as the first-ever transgender candidate. Despite a cascade of reporters’ questions, he declines to clarify whether he will change genders just before the campaign, or whether he was previously a woman who transgendered to the man he appears to be now. Brushing aside the frantic questioning he says, “I’ve got national name-recognition now, and I’m going to use it.” In subsequent announcements he defines a political platform that resembles the one he and Ms. Harris ran on – particularly the Green Agenda that bans the internal combustion engine entirely. “The people will embrace it when they realize that we’re going to save the planet,” he says. “And they’ll all live healthier lives if they’re pedaling rickshaws and bicycles. They’ll get used to it, and they’ll love having no more car repair bills. The bike industry workers will be our strongest political allies, too. A great future lies ahead.”
EV Protest. American Automobile dealers, who collectively have a million-plus electric cars sitting unsold on their lots, deliver their protest of Joe Biden’s electric vehicle orders by organizing a nighttime drive-in of some ten thousand electric cars and trucks. Volunteer drivers park them all around the Biden seaside home in Delaware. With his regular automobile fleet parked in by the protest, the ex-president and his family travel by boat to and from the house. When local police try to ask protest-drivers who sent them, they find that most are illegals who speak little or no English. Police run short of traffic ticket forms, and arrests are impossible because thousands of drivers have been detained. Local companies refuse to tow the illegally parked vehicles, citing lack of storage space and doubts about getting paid. Delaware officials also reject the idea of discarding the EVs in the ocean, saying the vehicle-batteries would be a hazard to marine life. Hunter Biden negotiates a deal with his Chinese business contacts to have the vehicles removed, but unusually heavy snows retard the job, causing it to stretch out for over a year. The delay causes the Bidens take up residence in one of their other homes. When they return to the Delaware home, they find that state officials have given 85 illegals residence there. When Mr. Biden attempts to call President Trump for assistance, he gets a busy signal.
Native Roots. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who obtained a Harvard professorship by claiming that she had American Indian ancestry, is captured by a tribe of Mohawk Indians in northern New York. The chief of the tribe takes her as his fifth wife, and she lives with him in his hogan on the tribe’s reservation grounds for eight months. FBI efforts to find the senator are unsuccessful, but eventually the Mohawks release her with a message from the chief. He praised the senator as good company and a good cook, but he said they finally let her go because she simply would not stop talking. Investigators later learn that the tribe had threatened to depose the chief unless he sent Senator Warren back to Massachusetts. At her departure, however, the tribe did award her the celebrated Walking Eagle award that was bestowed on Barack Obama in 2008. Tribal elders explained to the investigators that a walking eagle is a bird that is so full of [doo-doo] that it cannot fly.
America has-a made-a my fortune. President Trump pardons all persons convicted of participating in the “insurrection” of January 6, 2021. Soon after his action, 125 of the pardoned convicts join a group-action lawsuit that demands $20 billion in damages against former US Attorney General Merrick Garland, former President Joe Biden, and former White House Chef Guiseppi Corleone. Lawyers argue that Chef Corleone shared guilt for the improper January 6th arrests by feeding Mr. Biden a steady diet of undigestible Sicilian food which turned him into a dangerous criminal.
Is this a great country, or what?
