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**SEPTEMBER 16, 2021**
Meyerson on TAP
Of Recalls and Elephants
In 1935,
**Billy Rose's Jumbo**-a Broadway musical too big to fit into any
Broadway theater-opened in New York's Hippodrome, an oversized
theater-arena some blocks from the Great White Way. It featured singers,
dancers, comics, animals, and the world's most perfunctory plot.
At one point, that plot had the brilliant comic Jimmy Durante sneaking
an elephant-yes, a real, full-sized adult elephant-across the stage.
When accosted mid-stage by a bad guy who asked him, "Where are you
going with that elephant?" Durante replied, "What elephant?"
I was reminded of this Great Moment in Theater History by the Republican
reaction-perhaps I should say pre-action-to Gavin Newsom's
landslide victory in California's recall election. In the weeks
leading up to Election Day, a host of Republicans, from Donald Trump to
Larry Elder to anti-vaccine nutcases, said the only way Newsom could
survive the recall was if the vote was rigged, and they went on to
accuse the Democrats of doing exactly that.
The full vote isn't counted yet, but it's clear Newsom has won by at
least a 60-40 margin. A margin so big-so, if you will,
elephantine-that for Republicans to keep on making their claims of
fraud would require them to stand center stage before a watching world,
plaintively asking, "What elephant?"
That was a course that Elder-who for decades has been willing to look
ridiculous in his quest for deranged radio listeners and more recently
for voters, but not
**that**ridiculous-decided not to take. Newsom's margin was so large
that Elder actually conceded and took down the pre-election allegations
of fraud from his websites and Facebook pages.
Despite this after-the-fact acknowledgment of reality, Republicans
across the land are making preemptive accusations of Democratic
vote-rigging. Virginia Republicans are alleging that if Democrat Terry
McAuliffe wins November's gubernatorial election, it will be due to
vote-manipulating chicanery. In Nevada, Republican Adam Laxalt, who
plans to challenge Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in the
November 2022 midterm election-14 months from now-says he's
engaged attorneys to ferret out the fraud should he lose.
In the complete absence of evidence of any such fraud in the 2020 or any
other recent election, much less in elections that have yet to take
place, all such allegations require the accuser to deny the existence of
the elephant-that is, of empirical reality. The Durante character
wasn't delusional or mendacious; he was just caught. Would the same
could be said of today's Republicans.
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter
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