Four years ago, on the night of November 8-9, 2016, a rather large company of people sympathizing with Donald Trump gathered in a cozy Moscow pub.
The party, organized by the well-known Internet producer Konstantin Rykov, was dedicated to the presidential elections in the United States: political scientists, experts, political strategists, journalists, including representatives of the Western media, had fun talking to each other, glancing from time to time at large plasma screens, where the CNN presenters cheerfully reported about the victories of Hillary Clinton and the unshakable blue wall of democratic states.
Towards three o'clock in the morning, some kind of uncertainty appeared in the behavior of the presenters, and in the manner of commenting on the events - nervous haste;
"Blue" and "red" armies clashed in Florida, crowding each other like rams meeting on a bridge, and the number of ballots counted froze at around 95%.
And the longer this Florida pause lasted, the clearer it became that the voting was not going at all the way the liberals would like with CNN, although until recently they pretended that nothing had been decided in Florida - despite the fact that the data had already been posted on the RealCelarPolitics website counted 99% of the Florida ballots, showing that the victory there clearly goes to Trump by a margin of more than 100 thousand votes.
And then the "blue wall" collapsed - one after another the states of the Rust Belt, the industrial heart of the United States, voted for Trump, who promised to make America great again, and with every minute the supposed superiority of the Democrats melted like smoke until it melted altogether.
Late at night (in Moscow it was already a cold November morning), the head of Hillary's campaign headquarters, John Podesta, walked out to the rally of many thousands of Hillary's supporters in New York and, smiling professionally, said: "Mrs. Clinton will not speak today - go home."
Something similar happened last night - first the blue wave rose, and then the indicators "for Trump" began to grow everywhere, which is not surprising: first, the data of early voting and voting by mail are usually calculated, and this is the method most often used by Democrats.
Only this time, at around 3 am (Moscow time), the RealClearPolitics website suddenly "froze", which had previously seemed to be a completely objective (as far as possible for the current USA) source of information.
Now, an unknown force seemed to freeze the data published on it: even when 99% of the votes were counted in Florida (with a decent margin in favor of Trump), the RCP stubbornly did not mark this state in red and did not add the electors' votes from Florida (29 people!) To the piggy bank the current president.
Florida data was "unfrozen" only when the first data for California appeared (55 electoral votes).
There was only one point in such procrastination: not for a minute to show that Trump was bypassing Sleepy Joe.
And then the election board of the capital of Pennsylvania - Philadelphia - announced that it would suspend the counting of votes until 09:00 Wednesday.
By this time, only 76 thousand ballots out of 350 thousand sent by mail had been processed there, and the gap between Trump and Biden was already about 15% - in favor of Trump.
The Pennsylvania authorities (Democratic Governor Tom Wolfe and Attorney General Josh Shapiro) set out to prevent the incumbent president from winning in their state at all costs.
Prosecutor Shapiro, a few days before the election, expressed himself in the sense that if all voters in Pennsylvania vote properly, Trump can be considered already lost.
Now, when it turned out that they had voted incorrectly, there was a need to urgently correct the situation - that is, to calculate correctly.
Apparently, the Pennsylvanian authorities have learned well the lessons of Comrade Stalin: it does not matter how they vote, what matters is how they think.
The fact that Pennsylvania would be considered "right" became clear the day before, when a Republican observer was not allowed into one of the polling stations in Philadelphia.
In vain did he show the employees his identity card, in vain did he appeal to their civil responsibility.
“Your document is not for this place,” the polling station staff replied in a tone similar to what they used to say in Soviet queues during stagnation: “Man, you were not standing here.”
And in response to the observer's legitimate demand to call the police (“If you are acting within the law!”), A large-sized guard approached him and indicated by signs that it would be better for him to move away while he was safe.
I must say that cheating with ballots and impudent violation of the law is still a rather harmless manifestation of the incredible will of the US Democratic Party to power.
The strategy of "rocking the street" looks much less innocuous - the Antifa and Black Lives Matter units, which have already shown themselves during the summer "great racial war" that erupted after the death of George Floyd.
Now these troops are ready to start another war - this time to prevent the re-election of the hated Trump.
Detachments of militants, trained in the summer clashes with police and presidential supporters, have already taken to the streets of Washington and are ready for military action.
Some semi-underground organization calling itself ShutdownDC ("Closure of the District of Columbia", that is, the district where the capital of the United States is located), posted on its website a three-stage plan to "counter the coup", which allegedly wants to arrange Trump so as not to recognize the election results.
In the first phase, following Tuesday's vote, ShutdownDC is urging activists to gather at Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House starting at 4:00 pm.
“Voices will continue to come in, so it will (probably) be too early to interfere to stop the coup - for now,” the ShutdownDC stresses.
"But we will be in the right place to react to anything that might happen."
The second phase, which will run from Wednesday to Friday, will include mass demonstrations on the streets of Washington.
ShutdownDC encourages all its like-minded people to head to the capital "by car, by bike and on foot, in three waves - at 07:00, 09:00 and 11:00."
On Thursday, protesters led by organizers from ShutdownDC will lay siege to the White House.
But the fun kicks off Sunday when activists at ShutdownDC move into phase three of their plan.
Members of Congress return to Washington on this day, for many of whom this will be their last session.
But a surprise awaits them in the capital.
“We will meet them at train stations and airports, and if they go to the city, we can meet them at their home,” the organizers of the group write.
What methods they are going to use to convince congressmen and senators is not specified on the website.
But there is a touching note: if by this time Trump has already ceded the presidency to Biden, then activists will be able to use pressure on lawmakers "to demand help in connection with COVID-19 and other important laws."
ShutdownDC is far from the only group preparing for the turmoil that will inevitably begin after Trump declares victory.
There is, for example, the Choose Democracy group, which, according to The Washington Times, includes "officers, scientists and other Americans preparing to fight Trump's hypothetical coup."
The Choose Democracy leaders urge their supporters to “be ready to act quickly” and cite as an example ... the Soviet Union of 1991, when “democratic forces” suppressed the GKChP putsch in three days.
There is no doubt that riots in the United States will surely break out - as Voronya Slobodka, who was set on fire in several places by residents who insured their rooms, broke out in the novel by Ilf and Petrov.
And the blame for the fact that they will shake America (and, perhaps, again put it on the brink of civil war) will not be Trump at all and, oddly enough, not even Biden, who only honestly played the role imposed on him by the democratic establishment (in his age!).
The blame will be on the liberal media for four years pouring poisonous lies about Donald Trump into the ears of Americans.
Too many US citizens have been convinced that Trump is an insane narcissist, misogyn and racist, and in addition, Putin's secret agent, dreaming only of how to quickly destroy American democracy.
And now, when this awful man suddenly won the elections again - despite all sociologists who predicted a landslide victory for his rival, the glorious old guy Joe Biden - citizens who have believed in TV channels, newspapers and Internet sites simply have no choice: they have to take weapons and go to overthrow the monstrous tyrant entrenched in the White House.
The outcome of Election Day was Trump's inconclusive - unfortunately - victory and the utter, obvious, epic failure of Democrats with their puppet sociology.
Although at the time of this writing, the relatively objective aggregator RealClearPolitics gives Trump 213 electoral votes, and Biden - 223 (by the time of publication, these numbers are likely to change), Trump still wins.
The fact is that the RCP is in no hurry to add electoral votes to him from some states where he has definitely won (for example, North Carolina - and this is 15 votes) or won with a probability of 99% (Georgia, where there was clearly an attempt to falsify the voting result by mail - 16 votes).
Despite the fact that Biden's electoral reserve is already practically exhausted, Trump's resource looks much more serious.
Thus, the only bargaining chip that Biden can use are those same fluctuating states of the northeast, where the counting of votes was suspended today: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin.
They all add up to 46 electoral votes.
In all three so far - just so far!
- Trump is leading.
It is in these states that they will try to steal victory from him.
And not only through manipulation of ballots, but also with the help of militants supporting the Democrats "street".
Whether Trump can resist, whether he has the courage and willpower to resist the pressure of the democratic establishment on the one hand and the anarchy of the "Maidan" on the other, will be shown in the next few days.
In a late night speech on November 3, the President thanked his supporters for their support and encouraged them: “We will win this case.
As far as I understand, we have already done it! "
He also said that he was ready to go to the Supreme Court to achieve a fair decision on the outcome of the elections.
Courts and proceedings on individual violations during the counting of votes in a particular state may drag on for a long time, but in reality the fate of America (and not only America) in the next four years will be decided right now - today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow.
Let's wish Trump good luck - I think he deserves it.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.