I hate election explanation columns. I had no intention of writing such a column for two reasons.

One is that the explanation for this election (and pretty much every other election) is too simple and concise to reach op-ed length.

The other — and the one justifying this column — is that no matter how many times people get told, they’re back next time with the same tired excuses (e.g. “it was rigged!”) and/or crowing (e.g. “America likes us — it really likes us!”) and/or fake, superficial soul-searching (“we didn’t EXPLAIN ourselves well enough”).

Let’s get the simple, concise explanation out of the way first:

Donald Trump won the election by getting, and because he got, 312 electoral votes, which is more than the 270 required to win a presidential election.

Kamala Harris lost the election by getting, and because she got, 226 electoral votes, which is less than the 270 required to win a presidential election.

Yes, it really is that simple.

Yes, it really is that concise.

And aside from one factor — the ability of the two candidates to enthuse their voters and get them to the polls — the reasons for the vote differentials are a dog’s breakfast of confusing details, each of which could have gone in other directions and changed the outcome.

To explain, I’ll look at Pennsylvania, a key swing state and in many ways a bellwether. Trump beat Harris there by about 140,000 votes out of about 7 million votes cast.

Why? Who knows?

Republicans thought Harris screwed up by not choosing governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate. They called her anti-semitic for passing him over, because he’s an Israel-supportive Jew. That may indeed have cost her some votes.

Democrats thought Trump had blown Pennsylvania after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at a Trump campaign event. Persons of Puerto Rican descent constitute about 8% of Pennsylvania’s population. That may indeed have cost him some votes.

Then there’s the US Steel situation. The Pennsylvania-based company wants to sell itself to Japanese buyers. Many Pennsylvanians, especially among the company’s 20,000+ employees, don’t like that idea. Both Trump and Harris oppose the sale, but protectionist voters seem to find Trump more convincing/credible on that issue.

It’s not that Trump explained himself particularly well to people on opposite sides of the issues. Nor did Harris fail to explain herself well enough to those voters. Voters disagree with each other. Someone wins, someone loses … and other than the vote counts, the “why” isn’t usually all that clear.

All we can really know is that, among those who voted, more than 98% supported some version of militarism and authoritarianism, which in turn implies that we’re never going to vote our way to peace and freedom.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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With 95% of precincts reporting nationwide according to Wikipedia (as of 4am on Saturday, November 9), it’s safe to say that the US presidential election is decided.

Donald Trump will presumably swear the oath and assume the office on January 20, 2025, having received votes from about 22.5% of the population.

Kamala Harris, having received votes from only about 21% of the population, probably has a more enjoyable life awaiting her as she re-enters the “private sector” after 35 years in various government positions. Her vice-presidential pension, being based on her time in and as president of the US Senate, comes to less than $20,000 per year, but she and husband Doug Emhoff share a net worth of at least $8 million. She won’t be missing any meals and she’ll have all the free time she wants.

All other candidates combined received votes from about seven tenths of one percent of the population.

The real winner of the presidential election, as usual, was None Of The Above.

About 57% of the population didn’t vote for ANYONE for president. Some of them had no opinion. Some of them had an opinion but chose not to vote. Some may or may not have had an opinion but just  weren’t allowed to vote.

So if you hear someone claiming a “landslide” or “mandate” for anyone but NOTA, well, now you know better.

Fewer than one in four Americans voted for Donald Trump, while more than one in five voted for Harris and a solid majority voted for neither of them.

Yes, we will end up with a murderous authoritarian in the White House for the next four years, but that’s business as usual and was always going to happen. The only question was whether the murderous authoritarian would be a Republican or Democrat. US elections are heavily rigged to produce one of those two murderous, authoritarian results, every time, without exception.

If you strongly preferred Trump to Harris or vice versa, you’re probably either ecstatic or depressed right now. I’m not sure WHY you consider the choice between a Ted Bundy and a John Wayne Gacy so important, though. You wanted a murderous authoritarian and you got one. Don’t be a sore winner, OK?

My sympathies definitely lie with the majority who didn’t pick one of your crappy candidates but who nonetheless find ourselves stuck with four more years of this serial killer circus.

See you in four years, if we both survive.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Wait, what? We’re talking about Joe Biden? Why? He’s a “lame duck.”  No matter who wins the US presidential election on November 5, he’s going home to Delaware on January 20.  His chances of asking  for, and getting, much from Congress during that two-and-a-half month interregnum are negligible.

But as head of the US government’s executive branch, what he can do is follow the laws, no matter how loudly Congress howls, absent Supreme Court intervention in support of criminal behavior.

He won’t do it now for fear of harming Kamala Harris’s chances versus Donald Trump, but once the votes are in he’s free to follow his conscience … if he still has one after decades in politics, where a conscience is a liability.

The laws I’m speaking of are Section 620M of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2378d), which applies to the Secretary of State, and its Department of Defense  analog,  10 U.S.C. 362, informally known as the “Leahy Laws.”

Those laws, according to the US State Department Fact Sheet on them,  prohibit “the U.S. Government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.”

Evidence that Israeli units have committed, and continue to commit, gross violations of human rights in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon isn’t just credible, it’s overwhelming.

Israeli forces have killed at least tens of thousands, and more likely in the 200,000 range, in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and Lebanon, since last October. Most of the dead are non-combatants, many of them children.

Israeli forces have been caught red-handed in numerous atrocities, from bombing hospitals and refugee camps to anally raping male prisoners with metal rods. Israeli politicians openly defend and encourage even that last one.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that Israeli forces are committing gross violations of human rights … and it is therefore illegal for the US government to provide one thin dime of military aid or assistance to those forces. Period.

Why hasn’t Biden already ordered the Secretaries of State and Defense to stop writing checks and shipping weapons to Israel?

Because Israel has a powerful political lobby in the US. Anything less than complete and unquestioning obedience to Benjamin Netanyahu’s every demand is a “third rail” … for politicians who face re-election.

Biden doesn’t face re-election.

And these days, the Israel lobby’s support goes mostly to Republicans. Its main intervention on behalf of Democrats is meddling in primaries to ensure “pro-Israel” Democrats get nominated in “safe” Democratic seats.

At some point, there’s going to have to be one of those “national conversations” over whether it’s really in the interests of the United States to unstintingly support a violent, atrocity-prone, ethno-supremacist regime.

That conversation is unlikely to go Israel’s way. But it has to be started by a figure of national stature who needn’t worry about re-election.

If Biden does possess a conscience, or even just desires a big “legacy” accomplishment, he’ll cut the Israeli regime off come November 6.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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