The Erickson Report for October 14 to 27, Page 4: Two Weeks of Stupid - the Clowns

Now for a regular feature, it's Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages and stating, as usual, with the Clowns.

So. Tweetie-pie engages in a pattern of risky behavior, such as packed campaign rallies and indoor events across the country while refusing to wear a mask and winds up catching COVID-19.

There was lots of commentary, but it took Rep. Matt Gaetz to see the real meaning of Tweetie-pie catching COVID, which is that it proves the protection guidelines put forth by the CDC, the ones Tweetie-pie persistently ignored, don't work.

"What I can tell you," he told Tucks Carlson on October 2, "is if this virus can get into the Oval, into the body of the president, there is no place where it could not possibly infect one of our fellow Americans" and therefore we should just go ahead and open everything up and let the disease run rampant because precautions are useless and, I guess, we all gotta get sick and die sometime.

Matt Gaetz: ghoulish Clown.

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Speaking of Tucks Carlson, on that same day he equated criticizing Tweetie-pie’s behavior in contracting COVID with blaming the victim of a sexual assault.

Carlson claimed the media and the Democrats said Tweetie-pie "deserved what he got" and that their perspective on Trump was: “He asked for it. He was dressed provocatively.”

I guess then in Tucks' mind, if a drunk driver killed someone, you can't criticize them for getting behind the wheel drunk because that would be the same as blaming a rape victim for her rape.

Tucks is an old hand at winning Clown Awards. Nice to see he hasn't lost his touch.

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Someone who used to be on top but has fallen by the wayside in the presence of Clowns more powerful than her is Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.

But while she has dropped from the top tier, she still has her moments, as on October 5 when in response to Tweetie-pie leaving the hospital, she tweeted "President Trump has once again defeated China. Welcome home."

There's really nothing else to say Marsha Blackburn: once a clown, always a clown.

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But our winner this time around easily outclassed the field. It was no contest. This time's winner of the Clown Award is Bill Maher, the most undeservedly self-important person in television.

On his September 23 show, he took time out from his usual self-indulgent pontificating to finger exactly who is responsible for everything bad that has happened for the last four years and everything bad that will happen under an even-more right-wing Supreme Court. Because just one group is responsible for it all.

Who? People who voted for Jill Stein. That's right, it's all the fault of people who voted for the Green Party in 2016.

Was it the fault of Hillary Clinton, who ran a crappy campaign based almost entirely around "I'm not Trump," didn't campaign at all in Wisconsin, and did worse among blacks, Latinos, Asians, and the young than Obama did four years earlier? No, it was Jill Stein voters.

Was it the fault of those black, Latino, Asian, and young voters who either switched parties or didn't vote at all? No, it was Jill Stein voters.

Was it the fault of James Comey, who, it was all but universally agreed, threw a monkey wrench into the Clinton campaign with his last-minute announcement of a re-opened investigation, one which, by the way, went nowhere? No, it was Jill Stein voters.

Was it the fault of the media and Democratic party establishments who, after the election, did their best to normalize Trump until they could no longer deny the reality? No, it was Jill Stein voters.

This is all based on the moth-eaten - better yet, dung-encrusted - notion that if only, oh lord, if only all of Stein's voters had instead voted for Hillary Clinton, oh what a wonderful world this would be because in three key states, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, Stein's vote total exceeded the difference between Clinton and Tweetie-pie.

Except there are two things wrong here: One is that it turned out when all the votes were counted that Stein's vote in Pennsylvania did not exceed the margin. Even if Clinton had won Michigan and Wisconsin, losing Pennsylvania would still mean losing the election.

And two, exit polls found that had she not been on the ballot, some of her voters would have voted for Tweetie-pie and half or maybe more wouldn't have voted at all. If the Green Party wasn't on the ballot at all, the only difference it would have made is that the Democrats would have had one fewer excuse, one fewer target to blame, one fewer way to avoid blaming themselves for their own screw-ups.

Oh, and one final thing on this, you really want to know who to blame for Tweetie-pie? How about the 42% of eligible voters who didn't vote at all? Why were the Democrats incapable of bringing out more voters? If they had been able to rouse just one-tenth of those non-voters, they would have added more votes to their total than all third-party candidates combined. And they failed.

I don't know how it could be, but I'm sure that in light of this Bill Maher would tell us that those non-voters are the fault of Jill Stein voters.

Bill Maher: truly a Clown.