Maybe this will help. I’m going offline, I honestly suggest you do too, at least for a while.
Open thread
Reader Interactions
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Comments are closed.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Only Democrats have agency, apparently.
If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.
When they say they’re pro-life, they don’t mean yours.
Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.
At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.
Ah, the different things are different argument.
We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.
It’s the corruption, stupid.
Fight them, without becoming them!
So many bastards, so little time.
Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.
We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.
This blog will pay for itself.
If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.
There is no right way to do the wrong thing.
Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.
When we show up, we win.
Peak wingnut was a lie.
ha ha ha! Nice try weird people.
That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.
Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.
They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.
Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.
JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?
C Stars
Speaking of breathing, has anyone checked on Cole lately? I checked here late last night and just his headlines made me want to throw up. Plus he’s sick?? So hopefully he’s feeling a little better this morning. And, like, still breathing.
TaMara (HFG)
I will say one thing – I want GA for vindication for Stacey Abrams’ stolen election.
rikyrah
Cole,
sending you positive thoughts.
rikyrah
@TaMara (HFG):
I do too. I didn’t realize how much I did until I saw a map last night highlighting what was left in GA, and they had a big azz circle around Atlanta.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah:
That would be sweet.
Hildebrand
I’ve been texting all morning with my 18 year old daughter – who has been watching MSNBC since she got out of class this morning. She is cautiously optimistic. This is her first voting election and she really wants Biden/Harris to haul this over the finish line.
patrick II
It is very difficult to find the popular vote numbers among the electoral college reporting. I understand his lead is over 2 million and will increase as the mail-in ballots are counted. This is only close because of the EC.
The Moar You Know
WI called for Biden. One more. We need one more. C’mon.
Baud
@TaMara (HFG): Agreed!
chopper
@patrick II:
lots (and i mean millions) of ballots in CA have yet to be counted. the popular vote isn’t an issue here.
As to the EC, it looks like 271 without PA. which is too close for comfort.
Emma from FL
Take care of yourselves. Think only about good things in your life that you can lean on: writing, crafting. music, reading, gardening, whatever. Plan those things. Do those things. Make good food and drink. Think about what personal good you can do in your world.
MisterForkbeard
@C Stars: Honestly, Cole’s headlines yesterday made the whole thing much worse for me and caused a bunch of panic. I had to jump off the internet for a few hours, haven’t read almost any of the comments from yesterday.
Hope he’s doing okay this morning.
Gin & Tonic
@chopper: Fuck it. If it’s 271, that’s a mandate. You know it would be if it were the other way.
MisterForkbeard
@MisterForkbeard: Can’t edit this for some reason, but Cole is on twitter and doesn’t seem too suicidal :)
negative 1
@patrick II: I am a super liberal person. Warren and Bernie all the way. My laundry list of stuff I wish a Democratic president would do stretches 3 states away. And yet, after this election, the absolutely ONLY priority I hope Biden has is getting rid of the f&%king electoral college.
I am very, very disappointed that ranked choice failed in Mass. yesterday. Qanon got one of their f*(king members elected to a federal office yesterday in Georgia. These two things are related.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic:
Right on.
zhena gogolia
@Emma from FL:
I’m going back and forth between this and Anna Karenina (because I have to!).
Baud
Shout out to ME-2 for doing the right thing this time. That electoral vote will come in handy.
cmorenc
@The Moar You Know:
I’ve been closely following the counts in Wi, and haven’t yet as of 11:56am heard any news organization call Wisconsin. What I understand is that Miluaukee is complete and the bulk of still-outsanding votes in Wi are from Kenosha county (more GOP-leaning) BUT the bulk of the outstanding Kenosha votes are mail-in / absentee, which tends to be more D-leaning. Bottom line, though is that Wi can’t be called until at least the Kenosha vote is more completely in.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Gin & Tonic: Look at is this way, Trump should have been a shoe in for a second term with the economy, and then loses, because of his own screw ups. That’s all the mandate Biden needs.
Gin & Tonic
Dow up over 700.
Yarrow
I see two interpretations for this:
1. Breathing people, which seems dangerous, will probably clog people’s lungs and ultimately lead to death, or
2. An instruction for people to breathe. Which is annoying. Stop telling me what to do. I’ll breathe if I damn well feel like it, thankyewverymuch.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
On likely Biden victory?
Emma from FL
@zhena gogolia: as long as it’s not The Brothers Karamazov.
WereBear
I am reading about vampires.
White & Gold Purgatorian
I’ve been offline most of the morning. Definitely doing better than last night but still worried sick about the Senate and mad as hell about the house seats we lost. Also, deeply concerned about the future of this country when so many Americans seem to favor a banana republic style dictatorship over a democratic republic. This won’t be fixed in my lifetime, but I’d welcome thoughts on worthy organizations that are doing work to bolster actual democracy in America.
Money to candidates is fine and needed, but it doesn’t leave many footprints if the candidates lose. We need long term education/re-education/propaganda efforts to shift public opinion back toward what I used to believe were norms. And no, waiting for the MAGA folks to die off won’t do it because they are busily indoctrinating new generations. I look at the local vote totals here (Alabama) and it is clear the youth vote is not going to save us because they are voting just like their parents and grandparents.
Kent
Exactly. Both Bush and Trump both LOST the popular vote and governed like they had an absolute mandate with zero attempt at any sort of cross-the-aisle compromise on any aspect of executive branch government.
Presidential power is absolute. You don’t get more of it with an EV landslide. If Biden ends up winning a 5-7 million popular vote margin, that’s a hell of a lot bigger mandate than Trump ever had.
hotshoe
Off all media yesterday since 7AM, this is the first screen I’ve opened.
I nearly cried when I saw the headline “breathe people” as I instantly assumed it was an instruction to keep breathing through the panic of Dumpster having already won.
Thank god that’s not it.
Okay, I can breathe now.
At least for a little while.
Brachiator
I see that I made the right decision by avoiding the Internets and all election news last night. Had I stayed up and watched the results, I would be a nervous wreck by now.
I see that once again the Democratic candidate leads with the popular vote. I don’t know what we do about the electoral college. Simply dumping it would also largely eliminate the importance of states as political entities.
I am looking over the California state ballot results, and am happy at some outcomes, disappointed in others. I have to look at some local races.
I got no clue as to what might happen next. Just have to keep calm and carry on. But damn, I was hoping for a landslide victory for Biden/Harris.
ETA: I may have to go back to my election avoidance TV and movie list for a few more days.
JeffH
No one calling it yet, but Carolyn Bourdeaux is claiming victory in GA-7 (I think with reason.) One House pickup at least.
germy
frosty
Reposting from below, I’m breathing a little better. As soon as I’m done my coffee I’m going offline and getting some shit done.
I’m slightly more cautiously optimistic about PA now. York County has counted all the votes, including absentees and mail-ins and Biden got 36.7%. For every election since 1988, if the County went over 34% the state went for the Democrat.
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: Who knows.
Immanentize
Someone asked about Cole?
Seems normal today to me.
Gin & Tonic
@Kent: Joe is on track to have (maybe already has) more popular votes than any Presidential candidate in US history.
ETA: knocking on the door of 70 million.
Yarrow
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: already has! That must be some kind of mandate.
Baud
@Kent:
Bush and Trump both started off having a GOP Congress, which, as we know, always fall in line with their president.
C Stars
@MisterForkbeard: ok, good good. Yes, this blog last night made me need to take a tranquilizer. Glad we’re all breathing now.
Kent
Without Covid I think Trump would be cruising to victory today. Sobering thought that it might have took the worst pandemic in a century to unseat such an unfit leader.
germy
Women and Black people couldn’t vote in 1876.
piratedan
it is like a race and the last 10 yards are just as important as the previous 90
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Immanentize
Judge Sullivan is not happy with the USPS today. DeJail for DeJoy?
StringOnAStick
So glad we just moved to.deep blue Oregon!
Aziz, light!
@negative 1: A president can do diddly and squat to relieve us of the EC. Amending the constitution is a heavy lift. First you would need to get rid of the Republican Party.
MisterForkbeard
@Kent: I’m going to repeat my response from the last (mostly dead) thread:
Kent
Nonsense. We live in a Federal system. The states are immensely consequential as political entities. They have governors and legislatures and control vast areas of policy.
We just don’t need a archaic electoral college that was designed to heighten the power of southern slave states (and still does).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kent: Incumbent in a good economy so that should be no surprise. And another sobering though is if Trump had merely just stepped aside and let the CDC do it’s job, Trump would also have won handily.
Immanentize
@Kent: I’m not sure about this theory re: Covid. It’s just as possible that there are millions of people who will vote for Trump regardless what happens. That those voting for/against Trump would have done the same thing without Covid.
topclimber
@germy: Wasn’t that the one where the House made the call and GOP traded end of Reconstruction for Dem votes for Hayes? Of course, if reconstruction had worked, black voters whose votes were suppressed in the South could well have let Hayes win outright.
Seems like we keep paying the price for failed Reconstruction forever.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Wait?
Biden WON ME-2?
Really?
Baud
@Immanentize:
That would be de-lovely.
Baud
@rikyrah:
I thought I heard that he had.
Kent
@MisterForkbeard: Yea. It’s one of those alternate history things that we will never know. Like whether Bernie could have won in 2016. I definitely think Biden could have won in 2016.
But I gotta think that Covid was a net negative for Trump, mainly because it absolutely crashed the economy and life for so many Americans. It was the #1 issue cited in exit polls and not in a good way for Trump.
cain
@Immanentize:
Steve must have given John a stern talk.
Immanentize
@MisterForkbeard: I agree with your read. And why would we want to undermine Biden by saying his win was a fluke of nature?
negative 1
@Kent: Every true Democrat should get this tattooed on their arm.
Yarrow
@germy: What in the world is going to happen with those ballots sitting in post offices? If people mailed them in good faith well ahead of the deadline and they just sat there it seems like they should be counted.
Burnspbesq
Although I can’t find it now, I thought I read earlier that when Maine recalculates, Collins is going to end up losing. Anybody else seen or heard that?
If I’m counting correctly, that would make Warnock vs. Loeffler for control of the Senate.
Immanentize
@cain: or a clawed backpaw.
Another Scott
@germy:
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
chopper
@Gin & Tonic:
oh i know, but 271 is too close for comfort cause of the possibility of faithless electors.
Kent
Perdue could also drop below 50% when all the Atlanta vote comes in, forcing a second GA runoff. Or am I misunderstanding how that election works?
cain
@chopper:
A faithless elector could make a lot of money.. just sayin.
rikyrah
@Kent:
I know that’s right.
Betty Cracker
@frosty: Not to be Debbie Downer, but as of yesterday, I’m forever swearing off bellwethers like that. Dems overperformed in one FL county I was watching that has been reliable as an indicator for ages, and they still got curb-stomped in Florida. Here’s hoping PA resolves in a more rational and predictable manner!
chopper
@cain:
i’m not super worried about the possibility, but 2020 has been a real kick in the junk so far, so why wouldn’t it happen
rikyrah
@germy:
PUT THAT MUTHAPHUCKA IN JAIL FOR CONTEMPT OF COURT.
Immanentize
@negative 1:
That is far too Reinhart Heydrick for my tastes.
guachi
Does anyone have an idea if there are enough outstanding votes to drag Peters over the line? He’s still behind by about 0.5%
rikyrah
@Immanentize:
put him IN JAIL
Jamie
@chopper: And another kick in the junk, and another kick in the junk, and another….
Ksmiami
@Betty Cracker: no offense but since education levels are tracking hard with this election, there are too many really dumb people in Fl
Another Scott
@Kent: The US economy entered the recession in February – before the mid-March lockdowns.
I don’t think that Donnie would have been a “shoo-in” for re-election without COVID-19 at all. The polls (yeah I know) have been rock steady since 2017.
Cheers,
Scott.
Benw
Causciously optimistic for a Biden win.
Hopeful for a 50/50 Senate.
It’s disheartening so many Republicans turned out for their god-king but it’s looking like we turned out more
Kent
Another vote count update in MI. Biden’s lead shrank from about 34,000 to 31,000 but we are getting closer to the end.
Yutsano
@Yarrow: That’s what the court case is about. I can imagine a lot of these were mailed before November 3rd and if not for the USPS interference would have arrived on time. The problem is a lot of ballots didn’t get post marked. It is, however, pretty clear that there was a good faith understanding by the voter that their ballot was timely.
Sjorter me: billable hours. All the billable hours.
Ksmiami
@Another Scott: also Dems really missed out on retail high touch politicking this year and I think the results show that deficit.
Yarrow
@Burnspbesq: Don’t they only recalculate if no candidate is above 50%? Right now Susan Collins is at 51.1%, according to the AP. I don’t know what votes are still left to count. Maybe Dem-leaning?
Yarrow
@Ksmiami: Agree with this. I think Dem GOTV efforts suffered.
chopper
@guachi:
last i checked there are still 200k uncounted in MI, most all from the detroit area.
Kent
@Another Scott: The polls were obviously shit this time around and I think they would have shrank more in places like Arizona and WI without covid.
We will never know. But I don’t see how Covid helped Trump. It brought on the biggest economic disaster since the great depression and closed the country. People are pissed and tired of it.
Kent
She’s at 49.7% on the NYT web site this moment that shows 75% of the vote counted.
Redshift
@Brachiator:
I disagree. One of the biggest (understandable) errors the Founders made was believing that Americans would consider themselves citizens of their states, and that state level interests would be a big part of the federal government. Understandable because they were starting from a point where they were all separate colonies and governments. But other than a kind of cultural identity, very little of national politics is really state-based any more. The Electoral College and the Senate give outsized influence to small states, but the effect is mainly on party control of the federal government, not on individual state influence.
In vast areas of everyday life, states are the most important political entity. Whether or not Wyoming gets a big piece of the Electoral College isn’t going to change that (and the Senate, which is more important for state influence, isn’t going to change anyway.)
Suzanne
It’s looking like shy Trump voters really were a thing.
We should never let them be shy. They want to be terrible but still maintain friendships? Fuck that.
Yarrow
@Kent: Well, one of those is wrong or just behind the other. The AP says 85% counted.
Obvious Russian Troll
@Brachiator: I disagree that the electoral college eliminates the importance of states on a federal level. I mean, we still have the damn Senate.
It would be fair to say it reduces the importance of states at the federal level–and I am good with that.
Stacy
What’s going on with Arizona?
Brachiator
@Kent:
I see that once again the Democratic candidate leads with the popular vote. I don’t know what we do about the electoral college. Simply dumping it would also largely eliminate the importance of states as political entities.
Nope. You would greatly magnify the importance of a handful of cities. As far as presidential elections go, candidates would never even bother going to many states.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@frosty: thank you for this factoid! It makes me feel better too.
Yarrow
@Suzanne: A cold Civil War. Or Uncivil War?
waratah
David Plouffe said that Biden has more of the youth vote than Obama had.
I loved hearing this . Has anyone else reported this.
Baud
@waratah:
I haven’t heard anything about the youth vote. What was their turnout?
Kent
We don’t need the importance of states at the Federal level. They are important enough at the state level and control vast areas of policy from education to environmental protection to infrastructure. That’s why we have governors and state legislatures.
Besides, states don’t vote anyway, people vote.
Cermet
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Not certified yet; Biden is in the lead with essentially all ballots that they believe to have been made, counted. Untill certifed, it is not won
Gin & Tonic
Looks like both NY-15 and NY-17 have elected openly gay men of color to Congress. Mondaire Jones, NY-17, grew up in Section 8 housing, on food stamps. That’s a perspective Congress needs more of.
Amir Khalid
@Another Scott:
Thank you for not typing “shoe-in”.
Gin & Tonic
@Brachiator:
Just like now, but with different states.
Full Metal Wingnut
@waratah: thank Christ. Please keep voting kids.
Full Metal Wingnut
@chopper: that’s…good right?
Yarrow
This cheered me right up!
germy
This must feel so bizarre to DeJoy. He seems like a guy who has pretty much done whatever he wanted to do without consequences, in his business and probably personal life.
And then he answered Trump’s siren call…
Kent
They already don’t go to most states.
And the campaign won’t just focus on cities. The entire southern black population outside of NC, GA, and FL gets completely ignored under the EC because black votes in MS, AL, AR, and SC are completely irrelevant. That’s millions of votes. That’s a lot of votes that would be in play with a popular vote election.
The entire west coast is also ignored under the current system. No one goes to WA, OR, or CA to cultivate either the rural GOP or urban Dem votes. Or the massive suburban GOP vote in places like Orange County.
I’m sick of white working class folks in PA, MI, and WI deciding the future of this country.
chopper
@Full Metal Wingnut:
should be. biden’s leading and it means the rest of the ballots won’t likely cut into that lead. as to peters, i have no idea if they’ll get him over the finish line. fingers crossed.
Archon
@Kent:
The electoral college system for selecting Presidents is not sustainable. It should be clear to everyone by now.
rikyrah
@germy:
put that MUTHAPHUCKA IN JAIL!!
germy
Brachiator
@Kent:
This is only true if you get rid of the electoral college.
Obviously, there has been a gradual movement away from the importance of states. For example, choosing senators.
Peale
@waratah: The CNN exit poll is, well, maybe reliable or maybe not…since we’re all hating on polls today. I wish it had more than two data points than 2016 than today. By age group, Biden increased his vote share of every age group except 30-44 year olds, but he had a huge increase with the 18-29 year olds. Biden still lost the olds, but not by much and there wasn’t much to gain. And he still did win the 30-44 year olds, but he was off by -3 points. Not to get into it – but the Millenials were a let down. The youth are the only ones where the Dems still have a sizeable lead.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Kent: 100 percent. So much of this country gets ignored now. I’d love to see Kornacki have to pull up counties in, say, Kansas, for a change.
germy
I don’t understand this:
MisterForkbeard
@Kent: To be honest, if she’s sitting at 49.7 then she’s almost certainly going to win unless virtually ALL of the 2nd choice vote. What is Gideon at, if Collins is at 49.7%?
germy
I agree completely.
Baud
@germy:
Oh, maybe he didn’t win ME-2. Maine splits its 4 votes.
Burnspbesq
One decision that went from a no-brainer to a challenge based on last night’s results is who gets VP Harris’ Senate seat. Katie Porter was the obvious choice if she lost, but she won re-election. Becerra would be a good choice, but I have heard that he is “running” hard for AG. A lot folks will push for Schiff, but I like him where he is.
Thoughts?
Poe Larity
@Kent:
Winning is the only thing that matters, so they are the only thing that matters.
Gin & Tonic
@germy: Maine has two Congressional districts and awards one EV to each winner. Trump won ME-2, the rural district (most of the state by area.)
Peale
@germy: Good. That’s a little more comfort. Net 2 for Joe!
TaMara (HFG)
@Betty Cracker: This might explain some things:
Tony Jay
@Yarrow:
It would seem to me (and IANAL) that Democrats should be absolutely battering the hell out of this issue, up to and including bringing urgent suits before judges in every state calling for an immediate freeze on any attempt to dump these stolen votes until law-enforcement professionals have had a chance to seize, record and account for every last bloody one of them. Get the evidence on camera and out there ASAP. Pictures of stacks of undelivered ballots piled up in multiple UPS would get the message across quite nicely.
By this time tomorrow every single voter in the country should ‘know’ that the Republican Party was caught using the US Postal Service to cage hundreds of thousands (at least) of – their – legitimate votes because they were afraid of losing in a genuine democratic contest.
Biden has won (probably) so it’s not dismissable as sour grapes. What it is is an opportunity to hold the GOP to account for their anti-democratic fuckery.
In other words, we were unable to deliver your requested Blue Wave, please take this legal writ to your nearest Post Office to collect it in person.
cain
@Kent:
I wanted to ask why we only get 7 electoral votes given our massive population expansion?
schrodingers_cat
The third party candidate in ME was encouraging people to vote for her as the first choice and Sarah Gideon as the second choice. If Susie Furrowed Brows wins again ranked choice voting will have proved to be not the silver bullet that my progressive betters have assured me that it is.
Ohio Mom
Ohio Dad who is a math guy (he computations in his head for fun) and a complete Eyore says he can’t see Trump getting more than 268 EV.
I hope that is true for obvious reasons; until it is confirmed, it is lightening the mood in Ohio House. Whew.
mad citizen
@MisterForkbeard: I’m repeating my concurrent take on this one from the other thread as well. My reasons are thus:
I’m not a buyer of the “Trump would have cruised to victory without COVID” idea. It would have been a totally different campaign and experience. Someone here mentioned the ground game that didn’t happen. Biden would have had loads of true rallies. And Kamala. The election was mostly a vote up/down for Trump. I’m so sick of the dude I’m much happier with him gone than Mitch.
guachi
@Stacy: Nothing right now. I assume they’ll resume counting ballots soon. Usually the late vote is D leaning. It’s what put Sinema over the top.
It’s enough of a lead for AP to call it for Biden. I think what I read was that Trump will take about 20% of a bunch of what’s left and then a pocket of votes (late mail votes?) will lean to Biden and Biden wins.
Whatever the reasoning, the AP and Fox News saw enough to give it to Biden.
p.a.
@MisterForkbeard: No Biden coattails for Gideon in ME.
Portland Press Herald:
As expected, Gideon won many of the left-leaning towns in the Greater Portland area, coastal York County and in Midcoast Maine by comfortable margins. In Portland, for instance, she won roughly 68 percent of the vote compared to Collins’ 21 percent with Savage picking up 11 percent and Linn less than 1 percent.
But Collins won the vast majority of more conservative towns away from the coast and defeated Gideon by sizable margins in many rural areas. Gideon also under-performed presidential candidate Joe Biden in some towns, complicating her ability to overcome Collins’ sizable victory margins in more rural areas of interior, eastern and northern Maine.
Collins defeated Gideon in Lewison, Auburn, Bethel, Fryeburg and Lubec — all towns that went soundly for Biden over Trump. The Republican also won her hometown of Bangor by slightly more than 100 votes.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Well, no voting system can prevent Republicans from getting the votes they need to win.
Immanentize
@cain: I think you might get 8! after the next census.
Bex
@Immanentize: That would be Delightful. And Deserved.
waratah
@Baud: he was talking and threw that in there. It is the first I have heard anything about how they vote. I have been watching msnbc and cnn
leeleeFL
@Archon: I think as long as Mitch and his ilk exist, the EC is the Fail Safe that rarely fails them. It was born to give the Slave States power not reflected by their population, since they didn’t want to give Slave lives equality, even if it was going to serve them. The Stain of our National Origin Sin will only disappear when there are more People of Color and fewer White People. I am not White, I am one of the Sheer People. So White Anglo Saxon, you can see thru me. I am hopeful for the National Blend to become more Cafe au Lait in my lifetime. I gave waited a long time for this to happen. Universe, MAKE IT SO!
germy
And it begins…
dm
@TaMara (HFG):
I’ve been thinking of posting this since the big “Thank You, DougJ” thread. I don’t know if it’s appropriate or not (it would be a bit better after a happier outcome).
But one can donate via ActBlue to:
I view these (and there are others) as “infrastructure”, things to work on for the long haul, and I hope we’ll turn more attention to them in the coming months.
cain
@Tony Jay:
Democrats aren’t really good at that kind of thing. They aren’t warriors that way – they are policy nerds. They are the polar opposites of Republicans.
Also the democratic base also gets all queasy about such tactics – although less so these years.
Subsole
@Immanentize: He should be so lucky.
mad citizen
@Burnspbesq: I vote for Schiff and give him a prominent seat near or in front of Trump at the inauguration only he wears a giant watermelon head. In fact maybe Joe can fall asleep for a minute, Hillary can wear a crooked pantsuit; not sure what Nancy and Kamala wear.
trollhattan
This election is costing me either a year off my lifespan (if Biden wins) or five years.
guachi
@schrodingers_cat: It’s only not the silver bullet because Collins looks to be getting over 50% of the vote.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Burnspbesq: Ted Lieu maybe?
trollhattan
BTW “liberal” California bought Uber and Lyft’s independent contract garbage hook, line and sinker. Sucks to be you, gig worker.
germy
(talking points memo)
Chris Johnson
They should be in mourning. They tried literally as hard as they could, and now they can’t have a puppet US President. Now they have to foment civil war… in a way that will obliterate most of their best tools and puppets through COVID and the collapse of healthcare, all while facing the same problems in their own country.
They SHOULD cry. Cry, Russian state TV, cry.
Democracy is not chaos, chaos is THEM fucking with it. All we have to do is govern, show community, and help each other. They will get people to refuse to do that, and those people will die of COVID or sink their boats in hysterical fits or shoot themselves in the dick. This is a bad time for the Russian state, and I am fuckin’ here for that :D
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: It looks like there are two Independent candidates for Senate in Maine.
trollhattan
@Burnspbesq:
It will be a Latinex individual, almost assuredly.
Kent
Another Michigan ballot update. Biden’s lead expands from 31,000 votes to 48,000 votes with 96% of the vote in.
Peale
@p.a.: Yep. I think our problem isn’t so much that we can’t field a candidate who’ll win an election. Its that too many of our voters either don’t bother to vote for the Senator or have decided that “vote for the other one to keep ’em honest” is a strategy.
Baud
@Kent: Good news.
Captain C
@Gin & Tonic: IIRC, Shrubya got 271 his first time around, courtesy of his brother, Katherine Harris, and the Supreme Court.
Puddinhead
@frosty: whenever I drive in York and Adams County and see a Biden/Harris sign, my first thought is what a bummer it will be to see that house on fire if Biden wins. Am I bad/wrong for thinking that? Never really thought that when Obama was running.
cain
@germy:
I was hoping for a deposition.
geg6
@Suzanne:
Totally agree. Not cutting any breaks to those mother fuckers from here on in. So sick of all the people whining at me, “Can’t we all get along?” No, we can’t and I won’t. I’m done with all of them. I’m walking into small businesses and asking who the owner voted for. I’m cutting off any and everyone who voted for him or who even associates with people who did. No more. Never again. Fuck it all to hell. I hate this country and want out.
frosty
@Betty Cracker: Fair enough, Betty Debbie Downer Cracker.
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: I lived in ME-2 it was a blue district then. Voted for Kerry and Gore and even Obama IIRC.
patrick II
@Immanentize:
There is no one I want to see in jail than DeJay — because his motive was so trivial. He had a background in logistics and wanted to privatize the post office. He came in under trump and took measures that would not only harm the postoffice but as a byproduct, hopefully destroy the vote and democracy in the U.S.
And that is what pisses me off about him. The destruction Democracy is just a byproduct of his business interests. At least Trump, Stone, and Manafort have some lifelong plans that include the importance of democracy if only to overthrow it. To LeJoy it was like taking out the garbage without a second thought.
Banality is the word.
Sedition, followed by 20 years in jail is another.
Bostondreams
@guachi: Matt Schlapp, wingnut, is agitating over sharpies there. https://www.abc15.com/news/election-2020/sharpies-on-ballots-cause-concern-for-some-voters-in-arizona
guachi
Pennsylvania keeps counting votes and the AP still has it at 64% reporting.
Weird.
Immanentize
@Kent: Thank you for that update. Senate?
ETA Peters looks like he is only down .1% with about 4% left to report.
Running a black candidate was a good move for the GOP
Dorothy A. Winsor
I saw that Trump was asking for a recount in WI. How does that work? Do they have to give him one?
guachi
@Immanentize: Peters still down by 10,000. I think there will be enough to drag him over the line. But it’ll be close.
patrick II
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
According to the Supreme Court decision of 2000, no.
Nicole
@Dorothy A. Winsor: If they do, though, let them. Twenty thousand is too big a gap to make up in a recount. At most he’ll gain a couple hundred votes.
LurkerNoLonger
@Kent: Biden is gonna win! PA and GA would be the icing on the cake.
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yes, by State law. But in the 2016 recount in WI, Trump gained only 131 votes. No one is expecting any swing over a few hundred, and Trump needs over 10K.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
A little tidbit on Proposition 22
Aside from the massive amounts of money thrown at this thing, the legislative remedy, AB5 was also a shitty law that screwed over many workers. It was so ridiculous that the legislature had to carve out tons of exceptions to the law.
Sacramento should have done better. Now, because of the way that ballot propositions work, it will be almost impossible to revise Proposition 22.
That Propositions 14 and 24 also passed is not a good thing. However, I am happy to see that Proposition 25, the bail issue, was defeated.
Kent
Peters moves into the lead by 1020 votes (essentially both are tied at 49.1% so Peters is running 47,000 votes behind Biden right now.
If the remaining vote is Wayne Co (Detroit that should keep Peters narrow lead. But the GOP candidate, Sharp, is Black so that may diminish the obvious Dem advantage in Detroit. I don’t know how that is playing out.
Bruce K
So … I know nothing’s official yet, but is it too soon to label Biden as the presumed winner?
OGLiberal
@germy: FWIW, Josh Marshall re-tweeted this earlier today – he didn’t have any comments either way:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dppad/why-the-post-offices-last-minute-ballot-crisis-isnt-as-dire-as-it-seems
PPCLI
@germy: Hayes “won” that year. Which is to say, after disputed results including competing sets of electors the House resolved the conflict by giving Hayes the Presidency in return for withdrawing Federal troops from the south. Ending Reconstruction and initiating a reign of terror.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Must be within 1%. If the difference is less than .25%, the state covers the cost. If it is in between .25% and 1%, the candidate pays.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@germy:
He should be treated like any jobless child support obligee who failed to follow through on the orders for support and hasn’t timely moved for relief.
He should have been told to bring a toothbrush.
Kent
Trump is behind in WI by 20,533 votes, not 10K. Apparently there are only 300 votes left to count in some rural county.
guachi
@Kent: That’s good. The AP feed I’m looking at has Peters down 10,000 with 2,558,450 votes.
What does the total you’re looking at show What I’m getting at is that whichever vote total is higher is obviously the more current result.
germy
@OGLiberal:
Yes, I saw that tweet.
I’m not sure about Vice though, as a news outlet. Is it reliable? I thought they were sketchy.
Ridnik Chrome
@patrick II: According to the New York Times, if the margin of victory is less than one percent the loser can request a recount. But unless it’s less than a quarter of a percent Trump has to pay for it.
Also, the Times says Trump’s lead in GA is under 90,000 votes.
mrmoshpotato
@Yarrow: Fuck the Russkies!
“Democracy can be chaotic! Choose dictatorship!”
Fuck the Russkies!
Ohio Mom
One thing I do not get is the argument that if the EC is abolished, candidates won’t visit certain states anymore.
What does a visit accomplish, really? A rally only holds a small amount of people in proportion to a state’s population. No candidate can visit every corner of any state.
It’s not the 1800’s, we have mass media to spread campaign information.
I get that rallies are fun morale builders and that most people are hopelessly shallow. They can’t and won’t understand that it is how the candidate will govern on their behalf that matters, not if they got to shake his/her hand.
But still seems a lame argument to me. Disclaimer: as a Buckeye, I am in no danger of candidates foregoing my state, ever, EC or no EC.
Kent
I’m still nervous about Nevada. They announced that they aren’t going to do any more updates until Thursday afternoon. Biden only has a 7647 vote margin in NV with 86% reporting.
Who would have thought that NV would be closer than AZ at this point? Not me. I thought NV was more solid blue.
SoupCatcher
@Omnes Omnibus:
Can the state take into account previous delinquency and demand cash up front?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Immanentize: I assume the Trump campaign has to pay for it?
guachi
Gideon concedes in Maine.
frosty
@Puddinhead: That’s why we don’t have a yard sign. I never put one out for Obama, but I had one for our House candidate. Who lost, of course. I don’t need to have my car keyed by my neighbors.
Jinchi
Georgia announced it still has at least 240,000 votes left to count. Biden is currently trailing by about 80K. Ossoff is down 170K.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: 0.25% at this point is 8100 votes. So if Trump wants it, he’ll have to pay. I’d recommend the WI SoS ask for a cashier’s check before starting the work.
Sab
@germy: Plus thete still was a poll tax in 1876.
Omnes Omnibus
@SoupCatcher: l would.
Kent
I’m on the WA Post page. It shows 2,549,806 for Peters and 2,548,786 for James with 94% in. So maybe the AP is more updated.
Fuck.
bemused
@Suzanne:
Amen!
frosty
@geg6: Exactly. I will never have another Yuengleng beer or Maple Donut.
My FIL owned a furniture store for most of his life. His philosophy was “If I put a sign out for a candidate, I just lost half my customers.” I don’t know why these idiots think they can get away with it.
mali muso
And there are some 200,000 votes outstanding to be counted there, primarily from the ATL metro region.
Jinchi
They’ll visit ones they ignore right now, instead.
taumaturgo
@Peale: More exit polls:
+ The Biden campaign preferred to court the exiled neocons who started the Iraq war, than Hispanics and progressives. They may not lose, but they probably deserve to…
+ Back in May, the Biden campaign announced that they didn’t consider Latinos a key part of their “path to victory.” This kind of arrogance yielded the predictable results.
+ Hispanic voters per early 2020 exit polls:
+ The results from Starr County, Texas, the most Latino county in the United States (96% Latino) and the second poorest in Texas, with a poverty rate of 33%. In 2016, it went for Clinton by 60 percent. In 2020, Biden won it by only 5 percent, with >98% reporting. J. St Clair
Gin & Tonic
@Kent: If he’s behind by 20k, then a swing of just over 10k gives it to him.
guachi
@Jinchi: Ossoff won’t catch up but he doesn’t need to. Just get close enough to keep Purdue below 50%. I think that’s likely even if Biden doesn’t win Georgia.
zhena gogolia
@guachi:
Shit.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Poe Larity:
Want federal funding for a bridge to go to a new plant in Punxsutawney to provide X jobs? Fuck you, too bad. You don’t vote for us even when we make your lives better through positive projects. There’s stuff in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh that provides real value and electoral support. Don’t like Punxsutawney the way it is? Then move….
gene108
@Brachiator:
Eliminating the EC would make every vote in every state count. There’d be a reason for a Biden/Harris campaign to set up office in Wyoming to try and get every possible vote. States would get more attention, because every vote would count.
Only a handful of states get any attention at all now during Presidential elections.
Kay
Our position should be very simple. The candidate who gets to 270 won. That was honored when Donald Trump won a narrow victory and it must be honored when Joe Biden does.
Trump doesn’t get the presidency for coming in second, and it doesn’t matter if it’s by 1 electoral vote or 50.
Biden is essentially in Trump’s position in 2016- a narrow win. I know it’s hard for Trump’s supporters but it was hard for Clinton’s supporters in 2016 and no one gave a shit about our feelings. Same.
Peale
@Kent: I think if its over 10K, the candidate has to pay for the recount.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: Yeah, double-shit. I hoped we’d seen the last of that furrowed brow.
Starfish
@Brachiator: They don’t bother to go to states now other than the swing states.
Puddinhead
@frosty: we had an Obama sign up on ‘08. Got looked at sideways ever since. No more signs. The Trump vibe is so much more intense than McCain and Romney were. It’s a bit creepy.
Tony Jay
@cain:
Can’t implement policy unless you get the votes, and if the votes are sitting in big piles behind the walls of Post Office buildings, ask your lawyer friends to go get them for you.
It’s not like doing it is going to – cost – them any votes, while not doing it will cost them tons. I also have it on good authority that Democrats really, really like winning. It might even be popular!!
Jinchi
@Brachiator: What was the objection to the bail issue in California?
Morzer
@cain:
Steve (holding Cole under one mighty paw): “Are you a man – or a MOUSE?”
Cole (squirming): “Squeak?”
Nicole
Amidst everything, I just want you all to know that there’s no better group of people to be chewing my nails with over this than you all. You got me through 2016 and you’re helping me get through this.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Amen! And if Biden wins by one lousy EC vote, he should wield the power of the presidency as if he’d won all 50 states. Trump certainly did. So did Bush II.
Omnes Omnibus
@taumaturgo: If he had gone after Hispanic voters in the way you are implying he should have, you would just find some other reason to castigate him.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Ohio Mom:
Maybe we need a little less worry about the voters of Iowa, NH and SC anyway.
Kent
But recounts don’t normally flip votes. More often they uncover uncounted ballots that were never processed. Or ballots that were processed in which the candidate was marked but the machine didn’t pick it up for whatever reason.
So they need to find 20,000 uncounted Trump votes without also finding any uncounted Biden votes. Assuming there are uncounted ballots out there, it’s likely to raise BOTH candidate vote totals. So they maybe need to find 40,000 uncounted Trump votes even if they are finding them in heavy Trump areas to compensate for the additional Biden ballots that they will also be finding. It’s a nearly impossible task unless there are enormous masses of uncounted ballots in Trump heavy counties that get discovered.
cain
@Ohio Mom:
It can be a moral boost. When Obama came to Portland (one of the very very few candidates that have ever come here) We gave him 80k people to hear him speak – a record at the time. That’s huge – and worth covering by the press – it gave him momentum.
frosty
Yes, exactly. It’s the flags that do it for me. They’ll be up forever.
Barbara
@gene108: One way to reduce the impact of the electoral college disproportionately favoring small states is to enlarge the House of Representatives. The Senate will always be a drag, but larger and larger House districts also dilutes the impact of large population states. It won’t be a clear winner for Democrats, because Texas and Florida and other large states are also affected, but that is also why it might be more feasible to accomplish.
tam1MI
@taumaturgo: I wonder how many of those low Latinx results are a result of likely Latinx Biden voters getting deported, jailed. Or otherwise afraid to go to the polls last ICE grab them.
dm
@schrodingers_cat: Since the third party candidate didn’t win, their votes will go to the voter’s number two selections.
JoJo
@Stacy: Nothing good. From the FTFNYT:
“Because of an error in a data feed from Edison Research, a previous version of Arizona results briefly showed an incorrect amount of vote that had been counted. The error has been fixed, and the map reflects the current state of the count…”
…We received more votes from Pinal County. According to turnout estimates, around 440,000 votes remain in counties won by Trump in 2016. Clinton 2016 counties have around 80,000 votes left to report.”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-arizona.html
Ruckus
I agree with the concept of do what you can and don’t have a cow. shitforbrains has done a lot of damage in an inordinate number of ways. He probably meant to do even more, but he’s an idiot and has all the skill of a fresh pile of elephant shit. One of the things he has done is show how insane a lot of our fellow citizens really, really are. I’m not saying that’s a positive but it is better than not knowing. The rethuglican party has never been an actual political party in my lifetime but is a crime syndicate, based upon taking/stealing every last dollar they can for their benefactors. We need to find a way to fix this.
cain
@taumaturgo:
That’s interesting – it seems that we did not go big tent as they should have.
I hope this is the last iteration of mistakes being made between Biden and Clinton.
Do. Not. Take. Any. Demographic. For. Granted.
taumaturgo
@Omnes Omnibus: You’re presenting a fiction of your imagination, I’m presenting the facts of last night voter’s choice.
Lapassionara
Re, faithless electors, I thought SCOTUS ruled they were obligated to voted for the person they ran for.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
If he’d gone after Hispanic voters that way, he wouldn’t have moved the needle all that much and would have peeled off some of his other demographics.
Keith P.
@Kent: Wasn’t there some fantasy precinct in ’16 or ’18 that had 100% GOP votes show up on some precinct doorstep or something (I want to say this was Wisconsin in ’16)?
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Yup. 270 to win. Close doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter for Bush or Trump and it can’t matter for us. Us not knowing it was going be close matters not at all, either. We didn’t know it was going to be close in 2016 either and Trump has been President for 4 years. Obviously we’re going to have to fight for the win, because docuhebag is going to sue his head off but do not give them one inch.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Puddinhead:
Romney was a toff and McCain they only accepted because of Palin. They had no emotional investment in them. Trump is the id in shoes of a certain kind of American, mostly white and mostly male, but not all of them.
Kent
@taumaturgo: Oh for Fuck’s sake. Biden won the Hispanic vote. The reason why this election is even remotely close is not the Hispanic vote, it’s the White vote in the swing states, none of which have many Hispanic voters
cain
@JoJo:
Yikes..
What a roller coaster.
hotshoe
@geg6:
interesting idea of asking small businesses who the owner voted for.
I’ve been thinking about that for days now, regardless of whether Biden or the Thugs end up winning. I don’t want to socialize or do business with any person who voted for any R whatsoever. Never. Never forgive.
I don’t want to be confrontational — I’m personally a scaredy-cat — but I really really don’t want “business as usual” as if the fact that they prove themselves deplorable can just be ignored.
taumaturgo
@cain: That’s the 1 dollar question, will the present leadership learn the lesson or better will the party purge those on the top that contributed to this lackluster showing? The Republicans purge their party and have implemented their policies, will the Democrats do the same?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Lapassionara:
One of Putin’s chaos agents. Remember, there was a Russian think tank that puzzled about 15 years ago on how the territorial integrity of the US could be potentially torn, along with a weakening influence of America and, presumably, the liberal order.
JoJo
@Bruce K: Since AZ is weird right now, I would definitely hold off.
Omnes Omnibus
@taumaturgo: Nah, you were starting to play a counterfactual game, so I took a turn.
trollhattan
@Jinchi:
Prop 25 passing would have upheld legislation doing away with cash bail. The cash bail industry has successfully killed it, retaining the cash bail industry in the state. I suppose this opens the door to the for-profit prison industry, next (kidding, I hope).
And yet, California is a “liberal hellhole” that can’t seem to even do away with the death penalty.
https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_25,_Replace_Cash_Bail_with_Risk_Assessments_Referendum_(2020)
taumaturgo
@Kent: Almost exactly what Biden and his cadre of consultants said back in May about the Hispanic vote. Is uphill arguing against the facts.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
tell it.
tell it.
Kent
Pretty much none.
If they are registered voters then they stand no chance of getting deported.
OGLiberal
@waratah: Don’t know v. Obama but per the CNN exits Biden improved v. Clinton with all age groups except for 30-44. Improve by 9 pts with 18-29 and 45-64.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/11/politics/election-analysis-exit-polls-2016-2020/
rikyrah
@Kay:
say it over and over and over.
taumaturgo
@Omnes Omnibus: I just presented the facts that are conveniently ignored by the current party leadership, they don’t let the facts spoil a good argument.
TheTruffle
@cain: That is from yesterday, however.
guachi
@Kent: The Hispanic vote swung heavily to Trump. It’s why Dems lost two seats in Florida and picked up nothing in Texas.
Barbara
@JoJo: Highly improbable that 440,000 remain to be counted. Pinal County in its entirety is showing 142,000 votes counted with 16% uncounted. 1/6 again over 142 would be a total of around 24,000 additional votes. With a current distribution of 56/42, that would be 56% of 24,000, or around 14,400 votes for Trump and 10,600 for Biden, for a Trump net gain of 3800. Biden’s current margin in the state, assuming all other counties have counted all remaining votes, is 87,000.
Am I missing something?
ETA: I know that its precinct percentages that are shown, but it seems unlikely that so many votes would be attributable to such a small percentage of precincts.
Mai Naem mobile
@Kent: I’ve been worried about Nevada since before the election because of COVID and the shutdown in Vegas. And I know they’ve called AZ but there’s a bunch of votes still out. Not sure where the votes are from – mail in or election day and rural or urban. Also a bunch of provisionals.
Ugh I cannot believe Maine is sending Susan Fucking Collins to the Senate again. Are you fucking kidding me?
localcomment
Anyone got a sense of what is going on in Nevada? Everyone is talking about PA, WI, and MI, but the margin is very thin (~8000) with a fair amount of ballots outstanding.
It was a red tsunami across upstate NY last night and Democrats were crushed (Balter, Brindisi were polling even or ahead 2 weeks ago and were defeated by large margins in NY 22 and 24 respectively by the Trump loving Claudia Tenney and the pretend moderate Katko) and the odious Tom Reed and Elise Stefanik crushed their opponents in NY 21 and 23. State level Dems were wiped out as well. Outside of Syracuse, a lot of ‘make liberals cry’ flags have proliferated and the writing was on the wall in the grossly gerrymandered NY 24.
taumaturgo
@guachi: Thank you.
Jinchi
It’s not a silver bullet. It’s supposed to prevent another unpopular clown like LePage from winning office. And it’s still better than the runoff situation in Georgia. Democrats have a hard time motivating voters to get out for those.
Glyph2112
@schrodingers_cat: does that change the math or was trump always thought to take me-2?
guachi
@Barbara: The AP says 84% reported. Between the time the NYT story was posted and now about 200,000 votes have been counted, if I have my timing correct.
I believe that the AP is probably correct in calling AZ for Biden.
tam1MI
@guachi: Well, my support for less deportations just cratered.
Brachiator
@Jinchi:
Trollhatten pretty much gets it right. I am still tired this morning and actually said the opposite of what I wanted.
The state legislature passed legislation to eliminate money bail. This was a good thing. The bail industry fought this hard and had Proposition 25 put on the ballot to undo what the legislature and the governor wanted.
So the result will be that poor people will often remain in jail for no good reason, because they cannot afford to make bail.
Barbara
@localcomment: If I had to guess, it is the impact of COVID-19, and Trump’s somewhat effective messaging that we can either control the epidemic or have economic recovery. Unfortunately for Las Vegas, the willingness of people to travel to large conventions by airplane is not going to recover while the epidemic is raging, no matter how much of Las Vegas is open for business. In this, Las Vegas is dependent on other states to apply effective containment strategies. Not everyone has the capacity to really internalize that fact.
Soprano2
I’ll say it again in this thread – I think a significant number of Republicans who voted for Biden also voted for the “R” for senator. That’s probably what happened in Maine, for example. Sucks, but that’s probably what happened.
Omnes Omnibus
@tam1MI: Fewer, please. And I do hope you were joking.
guachi
Edited to no comment
Oklahomo
I’d really like to take a moment in this open thread and thank the blog for the pie filter.
James E Powell
What’s the holdup on calling WI & MI? I want a bluer map.
Puddinhead
@JoJo: keep in mind Trump won Maricopa in 2016. Biden is up there by 6 now.
Aleta
Gideon has conceded to Collins in Maine. Golden is announced as winner in 2nd D.
Brachiator
@localcomment:
I heard a news report that Nevada will not count some ballots until tomorrow. Here is a Newsweek story about it.
cain
@James E Powell:
Waiting for all of us to have a mental breakdown.
germy
karen marie
@negative 1: You need the senate to get rid of the electoral college. Apparently there was an effort to do it in the early ’70s but it failed in the senate.
trollhattan
@guachi:
Trump carved out Miami-Dade, quite possibly using his “Biden is a socialist” attacks. The Hispanic voting base there is demographically quite unique, evidently. Treating the Hispanic vote as monolithic does not work any better than it does with the “Asian” vote.
taumaturgo
@localcomment: I’m guessing people wanted more than embracing the Republicans and being a President for all Americans, not just Democrats. Surprise, surprise, the Republicans already have their president and they have made clear to all who wish to listen, there is zero, less than zero, room for Democrats. Why go from Trump law and order to Biden unappealing, weak kumbaya? When was the last time a Republican leader reach out to Democrats?
Mai Naem mobile
@Burnspbesq: Ted Lieu. I think Ted Lieu just seems to have a Senator kind of personality. It would be nice to see Ro Khanna but he’s too new. Also Eric Garcetti is supposed to be interested in the job. California with its diversity should have a POC in the Senate. I would like to see Schiff become Speaker of the House or eventually AG or POTUS. He is just really too smart to be wasted as a House Judiciary Chair.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the notion that Biden would’ve won Texas, Florida and Ohio if he’d been more like Bernie and AOC (!) is… interesting.
germy
@localcomment:
Fortunately, Tonko beat the lunatic Liz Joy (she used to write a Tea Party blog back in ’09)
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: As if the “But he’s a socialist message” would have had less resonance with Sanders in Florida than Biden. Yeah, no.
The Moar You Know
@trollhattan: California is liberal to a point. And that point is labor. We treat working people like absolute garbage in this state. Been the case my entire working life. If you’re management or “creative class” or an “entrepreneur” or a knowledge worker, we roll out the red carpet for you. If you’re a dishwasher or construction worker, you’re fucked in this state. We’ll replace you with an illegal making $8/hour under the table with no hesitation whatsoever and no state agency will even talk to you, much less help you.
Mai Naem mobile
@germy: this is such garbage. I remember going into the polling place several times and being given black markers which were essentially the skinny sharpies – here in AZ. I hope the Maricopa County Recorder does a demo with sharpies.
tam1MI
@Omnes Omnibus: I hope I was joking too. But seriously, these people are getting the point end of Trump’s hideous policies and they defect to him? There is a part of me that says, “Well, fuck them then. They deserve what they get”.
taumaturgo
@trollhattan: When it comes to the Latino vote the results speak for themselves, all else is conjecture. A bigger surprise could be the black men vote for Trump. Sorry to repeat a weak candidate with a weak message produces weak results.
guachi
Arizona returns starting to trickle in now, for all you vote count watchers.
germy
@Mai Naem mobile:
They’re grasping at straws.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: AOC is a Latina. QED
Jim, Foolish Literalist
so this is trump congratulating Gary Peters, basically
cmorenc
@Kent:
Yes, but the overwhelming portion of the still-outstanding vote in Nevada is in Clark County (Las Vegas), which leans D – and is 84% in. For Trump to make up the difference solely from Clark County, let’s calculate what % of the remaining vote from that county Trump would have to win, without help from any other remaining outstanding parts of Nevada.
16% of the precincts in Clark County are still out, and of the 84% of Clark County precincts that are in, Biden leads 422,762 to 362,573, for a combined total of 1,208,097 Clark County votes cast. Precincts are not precisely equal size, but we can still use outstanding % of precincts as a rough proxy for outstanding % of votes. And so, using that assumption if 16% of the remaining Clark County vote is 196,666, of which Trump would need to win by 102,157 to 94,509 to win statewide by 1 vote, if he only made up ground in Clark County (which is not quite the case, since there are small nibbles of outstanding votes in red small-population counties but – these could be offset by the remaining outstanding nibbles in NV’s second-largest county, Washoe = Reno metro.) BOTTOM LINE: Trump would have to win remaining Clark County vote by 51.94% to 48,06%, which is 11% better than the current relative vote %s. ONLY if the remaining outstanding Clark County precincts are atypically R-leaning by 11% relative to Clark County average does Trump have a realistic chance of overtaking Biden’s lead in NV statewide, with the caveats noted about small amounts of outstanding votes in other small NV counties.
If you were to do a similar type of analysis on Arizona, the still-outstanding precincts in Maricopa county would need to be disproportionately R-leaning by roughly the same order as Nevada’s Clark County.
b
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: Thank you. I had to do a bit of work.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
The DeJoy hearing stuff is interesting, but sadly, Sullivan is retreating to that whole “”you’re really, maybe going to get it if you don’t straighten up” and “we do it on my schedule” thing that US District Court judges love so much. Makes them worthless.
Omnes Omnibus
@taumaturgo: Come on, say it. You know you want to….
tam1MI
@taumaturgo: When was the last time a Republican leader reach out to Democrats?
2000. George W. Bush. “Compassionate Conservatism”.
And it worked.
Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
@cain:
I don’t know why people keep assuming that the only reason someone voted is because they didn’t receive enough care and feeding. Maybe they’re no longer Democratic voters who just need to be reminded how much we appreciate them. Maybe they vote for trump because they like trump.
Article after article has talked about the fucking bizarre rate of support he receives from Hispanics despite the outright racism, deportation and stealing of children. And it’s not just the traditionally republican Cubans, either.
I don’t know what the deal is. Some of it because the socialism label has worked. But maybe American trump-supporting Hispanics see themselves as different and better than the unwashed masses seeking refuge. Maybe they love trump’s machismo, or his celebrity, or his pro-life views, or who the hell knows. But the problem is not simply that we haven’t told them recently that we love them.
Aleta
@Soprano2: That’s my guess too. Along with help from the thieving, grift-bestowing, threatening, vote-buying, openly corrupt administration and its friends, and the sweet talking of dark money.
Bill Arnold
@Another Scott:
No. COVID-19 was one of the reasons that the polls never narrowed. COVID-19 catastrophic mishandling (timed by them for a pre-election wave in battleground states) and various other Trump administration/proxy missteps dominated the pre-election news cycles, helping to stomp out RW late-election-cycle ratfucking like the Hunter Biden BS.
(Seriously. Democrats will continue to get stomped until they start getting better with influence operations; they were better this round, but not enough. Hopefully enough for a win.)
Now back to figuring out how accurate the polls were, and where and why. (Minnesota, polls called it. Next door, polls off by a lot.)
James E Powell
@guachi:
Very bitter about Gideon losing. I thought it was close to a lock.
germy
@taumaturgo:
Stop talking about the Latino vote. There is no Latino vote. The notion that right wing Cubans and Venezuelans have anything other than a language, loosely speaking, in common with Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans is the laziest Anglo thinking ever.
Jinchi
@James E Powell: They’re still counting the mail-in ballots, I think, which are expected to skew differently than the election day votes. Expected to be significantly pro-Biden, but I doubt the media want to screw up that call with the margin so close.
taumaturgo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Will never know, will we? What is evident is that the Obama -Hillary -Biden triumvirate has been, to put it mildly, a slow-moving catastrophe. Will the party retire these leaders before is too late?
OGLiberal
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yes, and I heard it was $3M and you don’t get that back if the re-count doesn’t change the result. Trump is way to cheap to spend that kind of cash so he’ll likely just have his lawyers sue for some sort of BS.
guachi
With record turnout this cycle I really wonder how many keep voting. We saw Democratic enthusiasm (but not Republican) in 2018. And 2010 was the reverse. While 2012 and 2020 shows more enthusiasm for the incumbent President.
Do Republicans show up in 2022 in hatred of Biden? Do Democratic voters stay stunned and activated?
I really have no idea.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Johnny Gentle (famous crooner): on the car radio yesterday I heard the results of an exit poll that said the most important quality in a President is “strength”, “good judgment” came in second. We see trump as a strutting, incompetent buffoon. His supporters see him as a tough guy who doesn’t take any crap. From the college professors, and the euro-weenies, and the New York Times, and Hollywood elites
Almost Retired
The California Secretary of State’s website shows a gap of nearly 4,000,000 votes between Biden and Trump, which should help run up that popular vote margin nicely, for what it’s worth. That must be a whole lotta fraud there, right Trump?
zhena gogolia
All this pie is making me hungry.
OGLiberal
@germy: Can be a bit dudebro but they’re pretty good with investigative stuff.
Subsole
@taumaturgo: The black vote? They got about 2hat, 19? They always get around that, mostly male. Wasn’t aware there was much of a shift there.
Which is another question: how many elections are we using as data points? Using the clusterfuck of 2016 alone might produce poor results. How well did latinos do with Romney? McCain?
Also, have not heard much about the Asian vote. Any word there?
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Mai Naem mobile: Seriously, what do they think this is…a hurricane map?
zzyzx
OK Wisconsin is getting called.
We just need AZ and NV to hold on and maybe GA or PA to flip to give us some breathing room.
patrick II
@Kent:
What about the legal ones that were afraid to register? Perhaps they had an illegal relative at their address.
LadySuzy
@JoJo: FUCK
JoJo
@Barbara: I hope you are correct. Right now I don’t have a mind for such things. I’m just kind of in panic, rock-back-and-forth-in-a-corner-weeping mode for the moment. Too little sleep. I am happy that it looks like WI flipped for Biden. There is no way a recount would reverse that. Living in a state that helped put Trump over the top in 2016 was just depressing as hell.
rikyrah
@Johnny Gentle (famous crooner):
I have tired of trying to figure it out. I don’t think it’s anymore simpler than this:
THEY THINK THEY’RE WHITE.
You can get mad at me about feeling this way…but, I don’t see any other reason that makes sense. Folks can tiptoe around it and try and find eleven billionty reasons …but, nothing makes more sense to me than this.
Jinchi
I’ll second that. There are very few broad demographic groups that cluster tightly to one ideology or party in the US. And as for the comment about black men – the overwhelming majority voted for Biden. Trump (and Republicans in general) simply does better with black men than he does with black women.
trollhattan
@taumaturgo:
Just what are the “Hispanic vote results”?
I have no idea.
Subsole
@taumaturgo:
And replace them with whom, precisely?
NYC’s own prom queen of the proletariat?
Good luck with that.
chopper
@trollhattan:
helps that the usps ‘completely accidentally’ failed to get a shit-ton of miami dade votes in before election day.
trollhattan
@zzyzx:
Has AZ been dragged back into the undecided pot? Confess I’m not keeping up, but it was called for Biden at dark o’clock during my insomniafest.
mad citizen
@cmorenc: Thank you for this analysis. I’m still nervous, just because. About everything. Guess we’ll see tomorrow about Nevada.
trollhattan
@chopper:
I keep returning to “crime family” as the best description of the Republican Party. But with fewer scruples than the Mafia.
Jinchi
Am I the only one who assumes Trump marked his own ballot with a personalized Sharpie?
Kay
The analysis on polling should go further than election polling. We have all been relying to a certain extent on issue polling and if the election polling is off the issue polling is most likely off too.
We don’t know Trump’s approval, or what the opinion is on his handling of covid, or anything else that we were relying on issue polling to tell us.
Miss Bianca
@Morzer: I forget which Marx Brothers movie it was where Groucho got asked that same question, only to respond: “You put a piece of cheese on the floor and you’ll find out.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@trollhattan: And the Mafia has the sense to keep a low profile.
zzyzx
@trollhattan: No but I want to see 0 votes there for my own piece of mind and that of others here who are freaking.
taumaturgo
@rikyrah: In the Florida Cubans case, remember that they view the Democrats as weak and backstabbers due to Kennedy’s decision to withdraw support during the Bay of Pigs Invasion. After that fiasco, they view most Democrats as Castro’s allies, and this wedge still causing ill will among the Cubans. Add now the Venezuelan reactionaries that are pinning for regime change lead by the US, and one can see the results. knowing all this, what was Biden’s strategy? Instead of Chuck Rosa, he names a never Trumper Republican to lead his Latino effort in Florida.
Immanentize
@zhena gogolia: ??
Sebastian
@Mai Naem mobile:
Eric Fucking Garcetti?!
He is my mayor and he is a useless corrupt piece of shit.
gene108
@rikyrah:
There are white Latinos. Their ancestors were Catholic Spaniards, rather than Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
Not every person, whose family came to the USA was impoverished in their home countries.
They can just as easily want to join the ruling white class like the Italians did 100 years ago.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Lot more complicated than you suggest. Mainly because Hispanic folks are not a monolith.
And one other thing that gets overlooked. Hispanics as a group are younger than other demographic groups. And younger people tend not to vote.
From a 2018 Pew Research study, about “six in ten” of Latinos are age 35 or younger, compared to 41 percent for white Americans.
In one office I worked with, I was surprised at how many Hispanic co-workers expressed anger with Trump, and yet also admitted that they did not vote and were not registered. The most politically engaged were Sanders supporters. Obviously, this is just one anecdote, but again I was surprised at the mixture of strong anger at Trump and the lack of interest in voting.
Immanentize
@zzyzx: Arizona has been called for Biden by AP. Wazzup?
taumaturgo
@Subsole: If I follow your train of thoughts the Democrats will wipe out the Republicans in 2024 by nominating either Chelsea or Michelle. The enemy of the party seems to be a lack of imagination.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Sometimes I think this one is an act, but that’s just some very genuine stupid right there.
lowtechcyclist
@trollhattan: Yeah, I think AZ is back in the not-called group for now. Nate Silver seems to think it’s still likely a Biden win:
But for now, I’d treat it as still possibly in play.
taumaturgo
@Brachiator: They vote alright is just that the Democrats share of the Latino vote is shrinking. Again: “Back in May, the Biden campaign announced that they didn’t consider Latinos a key part of their “path to victory.” This kind of arrogance yielded the predictable results.”
taumaturgo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bright guy, was your argument?
Immanentize
@LadySuzy:@trollhattan:
You people made me look at Arizona. BIDEN WON AZ, OK?
There was a State reporting glitch which suggested that a LOT of votes had been added, which weren’t. So for a while, AZ looked like 98% of the vote was completed. It wasn’t.
That’s it. Still, at this moment —
84% vote in —
Biden 51%
Trump 47.6%.
Biden wins, Trump cannot make up the difference.
Immanentize
@lowtechcyclist: Wrong
OGLiberal
@taumaturgo: I realize those two things are not good and probably mistakes by the Biden campaign but what the fuck has Trump done for Hispanics and what would he do for them? Rile up his white base against them? Why not just stay home?
Brachiator
@Miss Bianca:
Man: Are you a man or a mouse?
Groucho: Put a piece of cheese on the floor and you’ll find out.
Groucho in A Day at the Races
lowtechcyclist
@Immanentize: Your link?
OGLiberal
@frosty: “TRUMP 2020: NO MORE BULLSHIT!” What the hell does that even mean.
LadySuzy
Let’s hope there are not a lot of registered latino democrats who have switched to Trump…. But judging by what happened elsewhere, I’m not confident, sorry.
Peale
@Brachiator: The other issue is that especially among Mexican immigrants, less than 1/2 currently in the US are eligible to vote. Either undocumented or have not coverted their permanent residency to citizenship. Its about 6-8 million who’ve had their residency for more than five years and haven’t converted. So their voter participation lags by 20%, but that portion who votes might be very different from the population as a whole.
trollhattan
@Immanentize:
That makes me feel a little better. Thanks!
lowtechcyclist
@Immanentize:
Nate Cohn:
Go argue with Cohn and Silver.
germy
https://apnews.com/article/ap-explains-arizona-joe-biden-bb16f91b04456b2513f40436248eb62d
EXPLAINER: Why AP called Arizona for Biden
Subsole
@taumaturgo: Enlighten me then. Who should we send?
No bullshit. Who? Post names. Enough with the snide, passive aggressive negging of the only group of people who are actually even trying to fix this shit.
Contribute some names.
taumaturgo
@OGLiberal: IMO just a matter of perceiving strength vs perceiving weakness in the candidates. Biden has a long center-right record that has been unkind to minorities and is riddled with controversial policies. At this late stage, trying to atone seems weak when you have Trump saying all kinds of batshit stuff, yet in complete control of the narrative within his ardent followers. Biden tried to play the reach out game and it seems to have backfired.
d.m. gordon
In summary of the rather unexpected results and lack of expected results from last night;
Half the country likes the Trump show.
Half or more of the country is racist, sexist, homophobic etc. etc.
Half of the citizens have no interest in representational democracy,
Half of the citizens don’t believe in science, scientists or experts of any kind,
I don’t expect any of this to change – period.
This country doesn’t deserve to continue for all the above reasons and more.
As soon as the restrictions by other countries on travel from the U.S. are lifted I’m leaving.
JeffH
@Morzer: Cheers for the Tall Guy reference!
Subsole
Also, while we’re reviewing voting bloc performance,
what
the
FUCK
is up with that 55% college white girls for Trump?
Ladies, any thoughts?
Because my silly y-chromosome ass is having a hard time giving a fuck about their concerns, if that’s the kind of loyalty we get.
taumaturgo
@Subsole: Hey I am from the despised liberal wing of the party whose opinions in the eyes of current leadership are worth less than a Republicans. Is up to you ardent followers and keepers of the status quo to come to terms with current facts and set the party on a path of fierce resistance and profound change. Short of this, the cliff is closing up fast.
tam1MI
@taumaturgo: In other words. he’s got nothing.
As per usual.
Peale
@Subsole: apparently the message that Biden would destroy the suburbs was enough to remind 4% of them that they wanted to vote for Trump.
Sab
@SoupCatcher: MSNBC ( Ali Velshi on Katy Tur’s show says they do require cash up front.
Sab
@cain: Candidates also like the opportunity to talk to people to fimd oit what issues are on theirr minds. E.g. the opioid crisis was on no candidate’s mind before they hit the campaign trails in the last few years.
J R in WV
@WereBear:
Oooh, I like Vampire novels. I recently read one with a Vampire bound and determined to save “his” people (all Earthlings) from an alien invasion. One tool oldest Vampire uses is turning SEALs and Spetznas into young vampires.
The last thing Alien invasion expects is potentially supernatural beings able to penetrate any fortress through any tiny opening, invulnerable to most projectile weapons, etc.
By Eric Flint, or perhaps David Webber, I’m bad with author/novel connections. At the end of the first novel, head Vampire was hidden away on Alien spacecraft, fleeing the catastrophe Earth had become for them, Vampire intending to deliver catastrophe to their home systems…
Bill Arnold
@Subsole:
Is that an exit poll? (if so, cough)
The Thin Black Duke
@taumaturgo: Fuck off, clown. Goodbye.
Tony Jay
@J R in WV:
Out of the Dark by David Weber.
A ‘fun’ read, if global catastrophe and the can-do spirit of heavily armed Americans are your cup of tea. Plus the Dracula from Fred Saberhagen’s stories well and truly lays the slap down.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Republicans have scruples? At all?
BTW, it’s lunchtime here and I’m finding some trumpers that I didn’t know were as politics is not a subject that the boss allows. Makes for a better workplace. Until today. I have come close a couple of times of just retiring today instead of in 6 months.
Gvg
@taumaturgo: Arguing with you is usually a waste of time, but i urge everyone to wait on these facts. In the past all of the right at the Election Day analysis of demographic trends and results has turned out to be inaccurate. The real % of any group doing something is information that just is not available and verified right now. Just wait. Every “fact” that gets jumped on will turn out to be slightly or greatly wrong.
Just look at the result versus the pre election polling.
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
How long did Chelsea Manning spend in jail for contempt? Like a year? Sounds about right for Mr Dejoy. Same for Mrs Betsy DeVos, who has violated regulations and laws both, and bragged on it.
taumaturgo
@The Thin Black Duke: So much for the big tent, party unity exchange of ideas bullshit.
taumaturgo
@Gvg: Once again, facts, not conjecture: + The results from Starr County, Texas, the most Latino county in the United States (96% Latino) and the second poorest in Texas, with a poverty rate of 33%. In 2016, it went for Clinton by 60 percent. In 2020, Biden won it by only 5 percent, with >98% reporting. J. St Clair
sgrAstar
@Mai Naem mobile: Alex Padilla, current CA SoS, MIT grad, and Newsom buddy, is rumored to have the inside track for Kamala’s job. I’m pretty sure that a latino will be our next CA senator. We actually have tons of great people in CA.