Biden addresses supporters in Delaware.
"We feel good about where we are. We really do. I’m here to tell you tonight, we believe we’re on track to win this election." pic.twitter.com/BbYb3GJmy8
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 4, 2020
We knew it was liable to be a drawn-out process, but we hoped it would be a tv-show-style quickie…
Funny thing is, you can spend weeks saying “we won’t know the results Tuesday night” and it still sucks when you realize you won’t know the results Tuesday night
— Miriam Elder (@MiriamElder) November 4, 2020
It helps that this time, the mainstream media is on the side of truth and justice, not of ‘the narrative’:
The Associated Press is not calling the presidential race yet because neither candidate has secured the 270 electoral college votes needed to claim victory. #Election2020 https://t.co/kz4UFkqaS6
— The Associated Press (@AP) November 4, 2020
President Trump falsely claims victory, even as votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia are still being counted https://t.co/MIVzhgaZBC #Election2020 pic.twitter.com/zHzJ4hPH1w
— Reuters (@Reuters) November 4, 2020
It sucks! But as my Irish granny used to say, in a proverb from the days when the livestock would start failing due to short rations and overcrowding at the end of a long winter, Live, horse, and you’ll get fresh grass…
Elections officials in key battleground states Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan issue statements alerting voters that final election results will not be ready until several days after Election Day, according to @MSNBC
— The Beat with Ari Melber on MSNBC ?? (@TheBeatWithAri) November 4, 2020
Couple of side notes… Silver lining: This leaves Doug Jones free, under a Biden adminstration, to use his hard-won skills bringing suits against domestic terrorists and racist GOP murderers…
Jones was elected in a 2017 special election and was considered the most endangered Democrat in the Senate.
— The Associated Press (@AP) November 4, 2020
… And maybe Puerto Rico is actually interested, now, in becoming our 51st state:
this is interesting that in the past, puerto rico has been kind of ambivalent about statehood. seems like that may have changed https://t.co/SLuZb6GI6u
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) November 4, 2020
Mousebumples
Wisconsin is looking good. City of Green Bay results should be loaded soon and should hopefully give Biden another bump.
Any suggestions for good tracking sites to follow on my phone? Most sites are crap for looking at details on mobile. I’m here, if course, but… 538 and CNN are not impressing me.
Baud
I hope MI can seal the deal for us early today.
Roger Moore
@Mousebumples:
Michigan is also closing up and is likely to swing to Biden when the votes from Detroit get counted. Winning Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin gets Biden to 270 exactly without needing Georgia, North Carolina, or Pennsylvania. That would be a nail biter, but I will take any EC outcome that winds up with Biden in the White House.
Mousebumples
Also :
Eta-
Croaker
Calm down
Pa is fine please no more freak out posts it really isn’t helpful. If you don’t know you can go to the damn dept of state for PA and look it up.
https://www.votespa.com/About-Elections/Pages/Counting-Dashboard.aspx
Baud
@Roger Moore: Is Nevada locked up? I heard it was close. I think in all these places, it’s the blue areas that have votes to be counted.
Ken
@Roger Moore: Georgia is also looking good. Stacey Abrams will emerge from this as a major player.
Baud
That Biden quote up top is comforting.
debbie
I hope someone with a very large microphone points out how appalling it is that Trump clearly knows so little about the election process in this country. “Stop counting votes now.”
Baud
@Ken:
Good to hear. She deserves it. And I’m happy for our many GA Juicers if GA turns blue.
Tony Jay
So once the votes are counted Biden almost certainly gets enough EC points to win, hence the bullshitting from White Tang and the Ameriklanists about stopping the vote to preserve democracy? Wow, that’s… exactly what people here have been saying would happen for months.
And once Biden/Harris get over the hump I hope they’ve got legal teams spreading out across the country in a coordinated effort to find out what happened to lots and lots of Democratic votes in GOP-occupied swing-states where it ‘seems’ the polls were off in both directions by waaaaaaay more than any legitimate margin of error.
Getting rid of the Pustule would be great, but exposing the GOP for massive vote-rejection as well would be better.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
It’s not locked up, but it’s looking OK. There are still a bunch of mail-in votes for Clark County, and those have leaned heavily for Biden. There are also apparently a lot of provisional ballots, which will take a long time to sort out and are less certain. So certainly not a done deal, but more favorable for Biden than Trump.
satby
Looks like going to bed early was the right call.
debbie
I was very happy to see Kelly beat McSally.
debbie
@satby:
I fell asleep after Joe’s statement, then woke to the BBC discussing Trump’s bombast. Nothing ruins sleep like rage.
JoyceH
@Tony Jay: What happened to lots and lots of Democratic votes you ask? Like I keep saying, look in the post offices!
Roger Moore
@Tony Jay:
It’s not clear how much of the polling miss was because of outright cheating and how much was genuine polling error. In particular, it sounds as if Trump had an effective micro-targeted Spanish language campaign that was probably missed because pollsters were ineffective at polling people who primarily speak Spanish.
debbie
@Roger Moore:
Fuck polls and fuck pollsters.
p.a.
@Tony Jay:
If we can get rid of the Electoral College this whole quadrennial shit-show would end. Inching closer: 30+ states have signed on to pledge their EVs to the popular vote winner. A work-around, not an overturn, but it can work.
MagdaInBlack
@satby: Yup. I started to get sucked in to the Guardian election maps, then said nope, and went to bed.
Geoduck
@Roger Moore: Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised either way, that there was cheating, or that the polls were all simply badly done. Dunno what the pollsters are gonna do to try and salvage their reputations…
Gin & Tonic
@debbie: Ain’t that the truth.
Quinerly
@Geoduck: it seems all the internal polls of both parties for House and Senate were off. Something stinks.
p.a.
@Geoduck: Really beginning to wonder if there’s a “just lie to the pollsters” movement among the pig people.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Looks like getting up early wasn’t.
Steeplejack
Well, it appears that the election situation has developed not necessarily to the Democrats’ advantage. Looks like Biden will win, but it won’t be the landslide and repudiation of Trump that we were hoping for. And there will be a lot of Trump/GOP obfuscation still to plow through.
I ended up not watching much of the coverage last night. It was on the TV, but there was a lot of crosstalk and distraction going on at Sighthound Hall. I came home around 10:00, lay down to rest for a bit and conked out until after 2:00. Just as well.
I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I took a gingerly look at the election news on my phone and got up about 3:00. Watched some distraction TV and am thinking about going back to bed now. I took a look at the (early) start of Morning Joe at 5:00 but didn’t feel up to it. There are too many known unknowns right now.
It seems that the Democrats have picked up a handful of seats in the House, but the Senate results are disappointing. I don’t even know if the Democrats are going to take the majority. Biden as president with Mitch McConnell remaining as majority leader is a horrible prospect.
Okay, I’m getting wound up. Time to step back and let others do the worrying.
WereBear
@Tony Jay:
We have to root out the cheating Republicans have embedded in the system. That takes time, but also, lasts.
Mousebumples
Okay, I’m going back to bed for like an hour. Or at least, I’m going to try. (i woke up about an hour ago and couldn’t fall back asleep without checking on returns.)
I’m more optimistic now than i was at midnight eastern, so that’s good, at least.
p.a.
@Gin & Tonic: Name change was down 55-45 early, but looks like it won. Of no real import, but a nice thumb-in-the-eye to the racists who were against it since it clearly became a Culture Wars issue.
David ?Booooooo!? Koch
@Baud:
debbie
@Steeplejack:
AP hasn’t called six Senate races yet, so I think there’s still hope.
Tony Jay
@JoyceH:
With Biden closing in on a narrow EC victory I’m warmed by the thought of White Tang’s saboteur in the Post Office feeling the noose tighten around his goolagongs.
Someone will have to take the blame, chum. Better hope you recorded the meetings where your real job was outlined, or it will be you.
Baud
@David ?Booooooo!? Koch:
Closer than I’d like seeing as how he said NV was in the bag for Biden.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
p.a.
50/50 Senate problematic as ‘ourn’ are more likely to stray than ‘theirn’. How it works when you’re a big tent, and actually democratic vis autocratic.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Roger Moore
@Geoduck:
The only I will say is that we need to wait for all the numbers to be in before we start bashing the polls too badly. There were clearly some individual states where they seem to have missed, but there are enough votes uncounted in places like PA and MI that we don’t know if the polls there were good or not.
Quinerly
@Steeplejack: Dems lost seats in the House.
Tony Jay
@Roger Moore:
That’s unexpected. I thought Biden/Harris surrogates had their own Spanish language GOTV effort running across the southwest? And what in the proverbial could Tang surrogates offer Hispanics that didn’t have caged baby stank all over it?
Steeplejack
@rikyrah, @Baud:
Good morning! ?
geg6
@Tony Jay:
?Macho, macho man! I want to be a macho man. ?
Zzyzx
While I’m starting to hope that Biden did in fact win, anyone who ever says that this is a progressive country needs to look at the senate results.
Tony Jay
@p.a.:
That’s a long-term project though, isn’t it? Worthwhile and important, but the GOP are shitting all over your democracy right now. Making that an acknowledged fact that GOP surrogates have to deal rather than a “some Democrats suggest” whiff would have more immediate impact for 2022.
Also I would like a pony, some non-fattening custard tarts and a TARDIS, please and thank you. ;-)
Ivan X
I’m glad I have this community. The sense of foreboding and loneliness would be much worse without you.
I had planned to drug myself and read escapist novels Tuesday night, which sustained me for all of about 4-5 hours, but I woke up, and here I am awake again. I don’t think I can sustain that strategy over several days. Maybe I’ll just go to the beach today and watch the ocean unfurl. the ocean doesn’t care who won. It was there before us and it will be there after us. Tide goes in, tide goes out, sometimes dolphins or fish show up and do a little dance.
Then I gotta just pretend like none of this happened, do some push-ups, be happy I live in a big blue state that’s larger than many countries, and not let the bastards get me down.
I was worried about Biden (and several of his primary challengers, including the one I supported) because it’s my strongly held belief that at the Presidential level, the more charismatic candidate wins. But I also though that Trump’s malignance and COVID incompentence might be great enough to make this election the exception. It still might!
But it’s still hard to accept that I live in a bubble and a great big huge chunk of my fellow countrypeople are in a whole different political place than I am, and have an apparent disregard for verifiable facts, and are more than happy to vote for a garbage person who operates with total impunity, above the law. But people love belligerence. It’s manly!
It’s also hard to accept that although there are fewer of them than us, it doesn’t make a difference; their votes count more, and there are still more of them than we’d like to believe. I think blue state secession is unlikely, however nice a fantasy it is to indulge. But can we not have blue voter relocation? Like some persuasive leader needs to lead a movement to create quarter-million-person colonies in red states. I’d consider it. Have jobs ready to go (many people are working remotely anyway). If the Federalist Society can hack the judiciary, can we not hack the electoral college?
I had a thought this cycle that maybe campaigns would be better if there were no polls at all. Let the campaigns make their arguments in the dark, and then the one and only poll would be the election itself. I’m sure this is idea has more downsides than upsides, but there’s something appealing about it. At minimum, I don’t think we can afford to take any presidential polls seriously again (even the good ones will be hard to identify when mixed with the bad ones).
I am hoping the infamous 2020 doesn’t become “the 2020’s”.
If this does end up at the SC, I still have the most naive of beliefs that lead me to believe that, if Biden appears to have a narrow lead (e.g. exactly 270), they’re not gonna just hand it off to Trump because they can. Appearances and all that. But really, at the end of the day, I can’t see Trump as anyone but the scumbag’s scumbag, and cannot conceive of people who view him more charitably. My optimism will be the death of me; it hasn’t gotten me far in the last 24 hours, certainly.
That’s what I got at 3 in the morning. I am not surprised by the outcome thus far, but the consistency of the polls indeed lulled me into the fantasy of a decisive victory that I never originally believed would come to pass.
I guess another Xanax can’t hurt. Extenuating circumstances. Sleep now would be good.
Gin & Tonic
@p.a.: Was still against when I crashed after midnight
Tony Jay
@WereBear:
Exactly. Work for the next few cycles and more.
Barbara
@MagdaInBlack: Well, I tried to do that but I couldn’t really sleep, maybe a couple of hours.
scottinnj
It also looks like that the Democratic Party may bigly owe the Libertarian Party (which one presumes attracts more GOP than Dem voters). For example right now (612 AM EST) Biden is up 8k in NV, and Jorgenson has 11k. Biden is up by 7k in Wisconsin, and Jorgenson has 37k votes. Maybe this doesn’t hold (remaining WI and NV votes may pad Biden lead) but t would be sortof Karma after Nadar 2000 in Florida.
SenyorDave
@Tony Jay:
And what in the proverbial could Tang surrogates offer Hispanics that didn’t have caged baby stank all over it?
That’s what I don’t get. He called Mexicans rapists and murderers, he separated and caged children, what in God’s name could he do that would make it impossible for Hispanics to vote for him? Because that should have been enough!
But he gets female votes despite being a rapist, serial sexual assault committer, three time adulterer (bonus points for banging a porn star while his wife was nursing their infant son). How could a woman go into a voting booth and say “I’ll go with a Trump because he represents my values”.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Zzyzx: The Senate represents land, not people, and that’s by design. It is not a democratic institution – in fact, it is a fundamentally antidemocratic institution, owing to the Framers’ distrust of democracy; senators originally were not even elected by voters.
I agree with you that this country is deeply, deeply flawed. I am not even comfortable living here, particularly as I am likely to lose my health insurance when the Supreme Court* nixes the Affordable Care Act next week. But you can’t look to the Senate results as though they’re representative of the people living here. They’re not. The Senate is a fundamentally unrepresentative body and is designed that way. I would wholeheartedly support its abolition if there were a remotely practical way to do so, but the Constitution makes that impossible, even with a Constitutional amendment.
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam esse dēlendam īgnī ferrōque.
Tony Jay
@geg6:
But he doesn’t even sport a mustache! That’s like pulling the lever for Lindsey Graham because of his Patrick Swayzesque strut and soulful crooning.
Roger Moore
@Tony Jay:
My understanding is that Trump was able to tar Biden as too friendly with Latin American autocrats. That’s still a winning message with the Cuban-American community in Miami and with a fair number of newer immigrants who came here to get away from problems in the old country. I don’t know how he squared that with his treatment of asylum seekers, but dealing with that kind of thing is part of the black art of propaganda.
Baud
@scottinnj:
That would be a bit of cosmic justice.
Chyron HR
@Tony Jay:
Qanon made a big (and apparently successful) push to indoctrinate Hispanics into the cult of “you know who’s REALLY stealing babies?”
Tony Jay
@SenyorDave:
Yes. There’s simply got to be more to it. Probably.
Then again. I come from a country where millions of working class people from deprived areas voted for a posh public schoolboy because he promised to make brown people stop working harder than them or something, so take anything I say with a handful of sodium suppositories.
Roger Moore
@Ivan X:
Join the club. I’m here because I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get to sleep again. Maybe I’ll give it one more shot.
Steeplejack
@Quinerly:
Whut?
. . . Okay, thanks. Just checked the Times coverage, and they’ve got the Republicans with a +4 net gain right now, but there are still 64 seats to be decided. I didn’t drill down far enough to see what the “lean” is on those seats. The called seats are 190-181 in favor of the Dems.
David ?Booooooo!? Koch
p.a.
@Gin & Tonic:
Approve 230812 52.8%
Reject 206008 47.2%
78% reporting
scottinnj
The other thing (still early) is that it seems plausible we will have a 51/49 GOP Senate (assumes Dems win any 2 of Maine/Michigan/2 Georgia’s/MT). In which case the most important Senator in the land is Mitt Romney ie he votes with Dems its 50/50 with Harris breaking the tie
Edit: should have said NC instead of Montana.
Argiope
@Tony Jay: I think this is all about the racial caste system and who aspires to be considered white with all of the privileges that go along with that. If you are a Latinx person who perceives that your family got here the “right” way and that you are white (remember, race is not the same thing as ethnicity), you may have little or no empathy for those who are not white and who are trying it the “wrong” way. I think we see evidence for this in the right-wing “militia“ members with Hispanic last names.But I’m not an expert on this stuff.
David ?Booooooo!? Koch
JoyceH
I don’t know if this says more about me or about these times we live in – but one of the reporters on the scene (maybe Georgia?) was telling the studio anchors that she was standing in front of the building where the mail in ballots were being counted and said something like “up there on the second floor”, workers were hard at work on tabulating. And I thought dang, woman, why don’t you just paint a big bullseye?
Roger Moore
@SenyorDave:
Hispanic and Latino voters are not monolithic, and my understanding is that he targeted specific sub-groups. The biggest example are the Cuban-Americans in Miami, who are still a bunch of anti-Castro dead-enders. Similarly, there are a lot of Hispanics whose families have been here for generations and who are mostly different from your typical Trump target audience by having Spanish surnames.
Steeplejack
@Tony Jay:
For what it’s worth, I read something that said “socialism” is a huge red flag to ex-pat Cubans and Venezuelans. That might explain south Florida, but I’d like to find out what happened in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. Apparently the Dems got slaughtered there as well.
Jinchi
Right. Biden is up more than 2 million votes right now and we’re treating it like a nail-biter because of the EC.
mad citizen
@SenyorDave: I always wonder these same thoughts. My overriding thought in the last 12 hours is “I don’t know where I live anymore.” Woke up at 4 eastern, thinking the worst is happening. Glad to be reading here after staying away from 4 to 6. Couldn’t help but think one positive is trump is wrong about everything, so good that he declared victory. Laying in bed typing on a mobile, finally mustering getting up.
Betty Cracker
@Ivan X: Same. Le sigh.
Baud
@Jinchi:
That lead will probably grow because California takes forever to count votes.
Cermet
While it is far from over, at least the MI and PA races are tightening as predicted by
David ?Booooooo!? Koch
WereBear
@SenyorDave:
When the only news you get is targeted messages that Trump = strong-man! it becomes less baffling. Like the way rural Republicans are completely ignorant of anything Fox News doesn’t tell them.
That’s the only explanation I can think of.
mad citizen
@Jinchi: I’m compelled: Getting rid of the EC should be a/the Top Priority. Let’s try majority rule for a century. This is bullshit. Our IN senator Birch Bayh was on a path to get it done but was blocked by southern Dem racists.
NotMax
Wow, everyone’s edgy.
;)
Steeplejack
@p.a.:
Name change of what?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mad citizen: Ain’t gonna happen, you’d need 2/3’s of both houses and 3/4’s of the state legislatures to pass any change to the electoral college.
ETA: Or a constitutional convention, and that would be a snake pit.
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack: The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Removing the last part was on the ballot.
Martin
I’m not buying the polling being this far off. I mean, yes, it can be off, but he narrative this AM is that it was wildly off.
I suspect these late ballots, and maybe ballots still in the mail, are going to pull some of these races more in line with the polls. But something’s not quite right here.
But NV looks safe. WI looks safe. MI and PA should be just fine.
And DeJoy needs to be in prison.
rikyrah
@NotMax:
???
scottinnj
@Steeplejack: Words matter and whether we like it or not the ‘socialism’ tag works well with lower information voters and that is clearly an issue i..e we have to politic with the electorate we have not the one we want. I’m reminded of how the GOP recast the estate tax as the ‘death’ tax. Words matter.
It is still way to early to do a post-mortem but another phrase where words matter is ‘defund the police’. Now all readers of this top 10,000 blog understand what that means. But the problem is that if it takes you a sentence or two to explain this to a low information voter…you are already on your back foot. And the other thing, I think, is that while many people understand the issues with policing (ie George Floyd), they actually like their local policeman (i.e while most police in my small NJ town are jerks, I know of at least two people who are still alive because a policeman responded to a 911 call and administered CPR until an ambulance arrived). The phrase I tried to use was ‘smart policing’ i.e. no one is in favor of ‘dumb’ policing, and if you call it “smart policing’ it implies your local cop on the beat is ‘smart’ which they like.
Repatriated
@Tony Jay:
At this point I’m wondering if it wasn’t just vote-rejection but actual vote-fabrication as well. Use facebook plus whatever other data to “cage” voters but instead of purging them from the rolls, just absentee-vote their ballots for them. Kind of like dead people voting, but they don’t actually have to be dead.
We know the Russians got into state voter-roll systems.
Maybe I’m just paranoid from being awake too long…
Betty Cracker
Just read that turnout was a hair under 70% — the highest since 1900. I don’t really find that comforting.
rikyrah
@Martin: prison for contempt of court…
That’s a good start
ryk
I worked the election here in my precinct in Misery yesterday. Very heavy turnout. I knew this was a red area of a red state, but I was still a bit surprised at the numbers. Trump (and all other Republicans) won by roughly 62% to 35%. Around here folks really love that hateful asshole. Sigh
Roger Moore
There are plenty more votes to count in Wayne County, so Biden could move into the lead with the next batch.
Betty Cracker
One bright spot in Florida: the $15 minimum wage initiative appears to have narrowly won the 60% it needed to become state law. Now the statehouse Republicans will have to find ways to kill that, just as they found ways to kill the ex-felon rights restoration initiative.
AndoChronic
Proud that we in Minneapolis broke our voting record last night. 2020: 228K+, previous record 2016: 219K+, population 425K+.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
Okay, thanks. Do the Providence Plantations want to become a state, and are they reliably Democratic? I’m guessing not, with plantation in the name.
rikyrah
@scottinnj: I
There were those of us here who told you that
Defund the police
Was a phucking loser.
I know that I did.
It was a self-own by self-righteous idiots, who don’t seen to understand that slogans matter. And, that if you are always “explaining” , then the slogan is bad.
p.a.
@Steeplejack: RI official state name: The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. (Rhode Island in this formulation being what is now Aqidneck Island (Newport, 2 other towns), Providence Plantations being Pvd and rest of mainland settlements). ‘Plantations’ the issue for obvious reasons. Change to simply Rhode Island winning currently. Became Culture War issue under guise of ‘preserving history’.
Lyrebird
glad y’all are here
have to focus on work
not doing super well, but keeping on
WereBear
I have boiled it down to: Did you go to high school in America?
If so, none of this should surprise you.
sanjeevs
@Martin: I don’t get how you can have results like Miami-Dade without the alarm being sounded well in advance by the Dems on the ground there
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack: RI, as you know, was never a slave state, so the word is used in its traditional sense. Bit of a tempest in a teapot, IMO.
raven
@p.a.: That makes my “certificate” for my service in the 107th even more of a relic!
Steeplejack
@p.a.:
Got it, thanks!
guachi
Three hours of sleep and I see WI has flipped. Still looking to see if Purdue or Collins dips below 50% so the chances of a D Senate live on.
Democrats are traditionally terrible in runoff elections in GA. But maybe this year will be different. I’d rather be in a situation to find out than lose outright from yesterday’s vote.
Ivan X
@Betty Cracker: Le sigh, indeed.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
I was joking!
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Argiope: This is spot-on. You just described my cousin who was adopted from Mexico and his kids perfectly. They did everything “right” so they’re special and more deserving than those other immigrants.
Darkrose
@p.a.: It really depends on the issue. Manchin has been solid on the ACA, but bad on immigration. The real problem will be court reform and ditching the filibuster.
PST
@Tony Jay:
Perhaps well-established American citizens of Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican background have the same range of attitudes toward poor, desperate Central American asylum seekers as their non-Hispanic countrymen. Some care a lot, some care not a bit, and some are actively hostile.
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack: I know. Just giving background.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
Thanks.
Darkrose
@Roger Moore: Adam pointed out a couple of threads ago that there was a big disinformation campaign aimed at Spanish-language media in FL scaremongering about Biden being a socialist and also going all-in on the racism against Harris.
Also in Florida, there are somewhere areound 800,000 former felons who should have been able to vote but weren’t because part of making America great again is bringing poll taxes back.
negative 1
@p.a.: It’s possible but the more likely answer is that they don’t participate at all. For the last 2 presidential cycles the most accurate thing has been to just add the margin of error to the republican party and go from there.
I know they won’t for a while but I’d be interested to hear from 538 how they think that’s happened twice, and fairly uniformly across the country.
The Thin Black Duke
@WereBear: Toxic masculinity is going to be the death of this country.
p.a.
@raven: Not the thread for it but have been wondering how you ended up serving w a bunch of Rhode Islanders. Learn many ital-american swears?
Ivan X
@WereBear: I think people are just good at compartmentalizing to comport with what they want to believe. I’ve heard many Trumpers saying “he talks a lot but I don’t pay any attention to any of that, he doesn’t mean it, it doesn’t matter, he gets things done and he don’t take no shit from anyone.”
David ?Booooooo!? Koch
@Betty Cracker: The prior modern high point was 63.8% in 1960, which was a razor thin margin (we wanted to break a barrier and the other side desperately wanted to stop us).
There’s often discussion if we adopt this or that policy or nominate this or that candidate it will supercharge turnout and lead to a landslide win.
in reality when we turn out to vote, it only motivates the other side to show up to spite us.
guachi
@The Thin Black Duke: Good summary of the last four years.
debbie
@rikyrah:
I have never agreed with you more than I do with this post. I’m so fucking tired of people going for the superficial, snappy slogan over an accurate, true one
ETA: Especially when a slogan gives an opening to the opposition to beat you over the head with it!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@rikyrah:
Yup.
cmorenc
@debbie:
The only thing that Trump knows or cares about the electoral process is whether he wins by whatever means. Trump’s understanding about the process is entirely transactional, like everything else – what’s fair and valid is what benefits me, what’s corrupt, unfair, and invalid is what goes against me.
p.a.
@raven: that document is THE FULL R.I.!!!:
NYT:
The climb took decades, but the fall was swift. Less than a year removed from his reign as speaker of the Rhode Island House, Gordon D. Fox pleaded guilty on Tuesday to taking bribes, wire fraud and filing a false tax return.
Mr. Fox, 53, took $52,500 in bribes to help a bar and restaurant get a liquor license and illegally diverted $108,000 in campaign funds to pay for personal expenses. He made the admissions in Federal District Court in Providence as part of a plea agreement that calls for a three-year prison sentence — though a judge will ultimately decide the penalty — and will almost certainly cost him his law license.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@satby: I did that too, hoping to wake up to good news. As I see it, Trump hasn’t flipped any of the states he lost last time, and has lost some he won. But he needs to lose one more.
John S.
@Betty Cracker: Nor do I. It’s hard to imagine people went out to vote in droves to vote FOR Trump in the middle of this shitstorm pandemic. Trump ran on bullshit and Biden ran on reality.
But apparently fear and lies win over truth every fucking time.
Darkrose
@debbie: The problem is that the Democrats are a big tent.
Biden repeatedly said that he wasn’t in favor of defunding the police. But everyone acted like Twitter was the entire party, and so the media stenographers dutifully reported that “Democrats want to defund the police,” when in reality, a few activists used the slogan.
debbie
@The Thin Black Duke:
It’s not even legit masculinity. You just know he’d run from real confrontations like a little girl.
cokane
Others have said it above, but I’ll just reiterate for the stressed. It’s looking good for Biden. It’s not enough for the Senate but, it’s still progress towards a majority there.
Almost all the remaining votes to be counted heavily favor Biden. Nate Silver estimates by +25% nationwide. Nate Cohn notes that mail-in ballots in Penn have favored Biden 78-22! And those are pretty much the only remaining votes there. And PA isn’t even necessary to win. Wisconsin has a Biden lead with nothing left to count that favors Trump. Georgia is on a knife edge, but has slightly better odds for Biden. It’s over imo. No responsible newsroom can call a state this close right now, but it’s over. Biden will have a safe two or three state margin. And probably something like a 5 or 6 million popular vote advantage.
debbie
@Darkrose:
No. Big tent has nothing to do with it. We need Lincoln Project-level communicators. Period.
negative 1
@scottinnj: This. To many people the calculus is that bad cops are better than no cops.
satby
@Dorothy A. Winsor: you and me both. I guess the good news is Biden’s ahead, but WTF that it’s as close as this???
raven
@p.a.: It was strange. Eight guard units were sent to Vietnam after they were federalized in the wake of the MLK assassination. The 107th was a company and they were placed under the battalion I was in. I got in a little jam and got transferred to them. They are mostly Italian with a smattering of Portuguese. Because they were all from RI they were able to maintain contact better than most outfits and I found their website about 8 years ago. I’ve gone up there for two reunions and I’m pretty sure the 50th was the last they will have since THEY are getting old! It was fun but not the big emotional deal one might expect. They were pretty clannish and I was an out of control 19 year old so mostly I got, “youse was dat crazy kid from California”
Being that I also lived on the west side of Chicago the swear words were already in place!
Steeplejack (phone)
@raven:
Big payday on Antiques Roadshow down the line!
MagdaInBlack
@Barbara: And…here we are. Good morning?
raven
@Steeplejack (phone): Can’t wait! I have my GED certificate too!
satby
Gotta go feed the feral cats across the street. I may just sit outside with my coffee for a while. Maybe in an hour things will look better.
John S.
@satby: My only explanation is Trump himself. He is the ultimate con man, and has literally made a career of ripping people off, lying to people and leaving smoking ruin in his wake. And yet, people kept lending him billions of dollars, buying into his bullshit brands and allowing him to continue operating.
I guess some people are more allergic to bullshit, flim-flammery and used car salesmanship than others. And it would seem more are susceptible to it than many of us would hope.
negative 1
@Argiope: I live in an area that’s like 35% Dominican American and pretty lower middle class. I don’t know a single Dominican American male that I would describe as liberal. Not one. There is no discernable difference between them and the white guys in my area. Honestly if it weren’t for the white people in the other half of the city thinking they’re ruining the city, we’d be totally post-racial.
Steeplejack (phone)
@raven:
Damn, bring that old musket and they could do a whole episode just on your stuff.
guachi
@satby: What’s weird is that the election is too close but also on pace to be exactly as I (and probably many of you) predicted. Except for Biden possibly losing NC.
I guess there is intellectually realizing millions of Americans are awful and stupid and the emotion of actually seeing it play out.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@The Thin Black Duke: Yes. Literally.
Sloane Ranger
Washed and dressed and a bit calmer. It occurs to me that a lot of Cuban Americans are the children of the big landowners of pre-Castro times. These people consider themselves the descendents of Cuba’s Spanish conquerors and, therefore, European. They also imported African slaves to work their land and exploited them when they were freed. They are, by birth and training, natural Repuke voters.
Also, in Florida, the Red counties voted 10- 13% for the Libertarian candidates in 2016. They’ve come home to Trump now he’s proved he genuinely is their sort of arsehole.
p.a.
@raven: ??
Baud
@guachi:
I seem to recall Biden getting in trouble for saying that the Latino vote was complicated.
raven
@Steeplejack (phone): And my 6ft yellowfin!
Patricia Kayden
John S.
@negative 1: Toxic masculinity seems to be the most plausible explanation for the Latino vote right now. And even though Latinos are by no means a monolithic block, my experience living in South Florida is that nearly all the men from any Latino background whether Mexican, Cuban, Brazilian, or even Spaniard all have one thing in common: machismo.
And Trump definitely appeals to that.
ETA: And to your point, the average macho Latino douchebag is nearly indistinguishable from the average macho White douchebag.
evap
@guachi: The special election in GA will definitely go to a runoff, between Loeffler and Warnock. Nobody got near 50%
scottinnj
@debbie: This. I mean one of the cornerstones of the Dem platform, $15 minimum wage, is going to get about 60% of the vote in Florida (whether it will be 60% + 1 so it passes, hard to say, but it will be close) which is going to be about 11-12% higher than Biden will get in FL. So about 20% of the people who voted for $15 min wage voted for Trump. I don’t think you can get all of the 20% of Trump/$15 min wage voters but some may be persuadable. Most Dem positions are actually popular!
Immanentize
@John S.: Decaffeinating Miami would forever change the state of Florida.
Caracal
This seems appropriate for today.
Fall of Civilizations podcast
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT6Y5JJPKe_JDMivpKgVXew
This is what the History Channel should be. The first episode on Roman Britain is particularly good. The dark age poem read in Old English at the beginning is truly for the ages.
I’ve been watching/listening to these in order. I’ve found it’s not necessary, pick and choose as you like. They’re quite long but easy to pause and come back to later.
Currently on the Easter Island episode. Is this where we’re headed? Maybe.
Baud
It’d be nice to have Biden win all the remaining states so the EC victory looks better than it feels right now.
Either way, we have to do some soul searching. Personally, I might have to consider becoming a normie. I assume they lead less stressful lives.
debbie
It’s small consolation, but my city and my county both did well. We got one seat on the Ohio Supreme Court; we got rid of one longterm Republican County Prosecutor; the city voted by more than 70% to establish a civilian review board; and not one Dem incumbent lost in the Ohio House. It looks like there may be one win over a GOP incumbent (16th district).
Dorothy A. Winsor
negative 1
@Caracal: Those podcasts are incredible. I just started watching them. From what I can tell they’re one person’s passion project and they are better than almost every professional show I’ve seen in years.
Baud
@debbie: That is nice for Ohio.
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I think most of us here understand the odds, which are in our favor. We just want it over.
debbie
@Sloane Ranger:
They’re the most susceptible to the red flag of “socialism.” We not only need to fight back much harder against that label, but we have to stop being diplomatic and start pointing out the autocratic and fascist nature of the GOP.
raven
Kenosha puts Biden up in Wisconsin!!!!
John S.
@Immanentize: You will pry the cafe con leche from their cold, dead hands!
But it’s not just the caffeine, there really is this strong thread of macho bullshit that runs through these various Latino cultures.
guachi
if Biden pulls GA out then Purdue is definitely below 50%.
It would be wild for the runoff elections that take place January 5th to decide a Senate that convened on the 3rd.
debbie
@scottinnj:
There are still idiots who think Right to Work is good. ??♀️
Betty Cracker
@John S.: I’ll never understand the “machismo” appeal of Trump in a million fucking years. Trump slathers on more foundation than a pock-marked trollop, wears lifts in his tiny shoes and spent a documented $70K on that ridiculous cotton-candy ‘do!
raven
@Betty Cracker: He fucks with libetatrds. . .period.
cmorenc
As of 7:21am, it’s looking increasingly probable Biden will carry Wisconsin and Michigan by narrow, but clear margins – and so if both Arizona and Nevada hold, Biden will have exactly 270 electoral votes. Trump is still very narrowly leading Michigan by around 26k votes, but 1/3 of Wayne County (heavily D) is still outstanding – at least 200k votes. And Georgia is still a realistic possibility. And this is even without Biden carrying Pa.
Still nerve-wracking uncertainty, but the odds of Biden pulling this out have improved enough in the last hour that I can breathe for the first time since around 11pm last night.
debbie
@Baud:
Grab small victories where we can.
SiubhanDuinne
@evap:
Glad Collins is out of the mix anyhow. Speaking of toxic…
ETA: Doug Collins, of course. But what happened with Susan Collins/Sara Gideon race? Haven’t heard a word about it. Off to do some research on Maine results.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
He’s a bigger pussy than all the pussies he’s ever grabbed combined.
negative 1
@Betty Cracker: He hates women and anyone who disagrees with him.
Immanentize
@John S.:
Con leche?! Girly man.
I am quite familiar with the macho posture in Miami — Public Defender in that judicial district (the 11th) for 5 years.
PsiFighter37
Jesus, I woke up 3 hours later to see Trump leading in WI with 21K votes left and 98% in. Fuck the people of this country…they saw how COVID-19 was being managed and wanted MORE????
What. The. Hell……
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
Ignorance is bliss.
Gin & Tonic
@John S.: I don’t get what’s macho about a flabby obese guy who wears makeup and high heels, but maybe that’s just me
ETA: Should have read on, as Ms. Cracker (naturally) phrased it oh so much better than I ever could.
Immanentize
@Betty Cracker: It’s macho like a “fuck you,” not a He Man vibe. Except he is a member of the woman-hater club.
ETA or what raven said at 154.
John S.
@Betty Cracker: @Gin & Tonic:
Look, I don’t get it either. Trump is about as insecure and weak as they come. But he talks a good game and struts around (in heels) and convinces a lot of people he is King Kong.
The macho men are the ones who seem most susceptible to his “tough guy” act. Most women and men who do not have toxic masculinity (like me) see right through it.
I have no explanation for why that is.
Tazj
@cmorenc: Yes! That makes this groggy, cranky person a lot happier.
John S.
@Immanentize: Ok fine, cafe cubano then if you prefer. ?
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I want to be a normie too! Is there a deprogramming resource anywhere?
batguano
The election played out pretty much as predicted. It was always going to be close with a good chance of not knowing the victor on election night. Mail ballots which were overwhelming Democratic were always going to take longer to count, have a much higher rate of spoilage, and be susceptible to USPS fuckery. We still overwhelmingly won the popular vote and look to be in good position in the electoral college, given where votes are still outstanding. This was an election held during a pandemic, it was always going to be hard. Sure we wanted a landslide, but that was just as likely as this outcome (or worse). Dirty tricks work. It’s easier to appeal to fear, and to break something rather than make it work.
Starfish
@scottinnj: Please stop with this bullshit. Defunding the police is not on any platform for office. America is still racist as hell and comfortable with the police shooting black folks. It is not noble to be aligned with the racists who decided blue lives matter as if a uniform cannot be taken off. If you empathize enough with the racists, that does not make you a better person. It just makes you someone for whom racism is not a deal breaker. These rural police are not less racist.
Geminid
@p.a.: I visit a friend in Atlanta, and driving around NW Atlanta and suburban Fulton County we notice small, infill neighborhoods of nice homes titled “(This) Plantation,” or “(That) Plantation.” A not very subtle way of discouraging African American home buyers.
Emma from FL
@Sloane Ranger: wrong. Utterly, completely wrong. It has nothing to do with wealth, former lifestyle, or whatever British-style class traditions leads you to think this way. Miami has several layers of Cuban immigration but the oldest and largest one is extremely conservative because it’s composed of people that can be spooked by the simple mention of “socialism” because they equate it with the upheavals of the Revolution. Add to that an influx of similarly disposed Venezuelans, a massive toxic disinformation campaign led by the also hyper conservative radio and tv figures and a male population with toxic traditional views of masculinity and bob’s your uncle.
BTW, there isn’t enough land in Cuba — hell, in the Caribbean — to account for the numbers of the Cuban diaspora.
WereBear
@Caracal: Thanks, loaded that in.
For some reason, even when I’m worn out and frazzled, podcasts still work in a way even audiobooks do not. Shorter arc, I guess.
Kathleen
@The Thin Black Duke: Amen.
Darkrose
@debbie: So we kick the people who are further left out of the party? Ask for their votes and then tell them to shut up?
We joke about “Democrats in disarray”, but there’s a reason it’s a thing. In a broad coalition, some factions are inevitably going to have stances that are on the fringes. Biden did a great job of staying on message, but how is he supposed to keep the media from focusing on the fringes in order to get their horserace?
schrodingers_cat
Ah I remember those Defunding the Police Debates, where I was shouted down by my blog betters when I said that the “Community Policing and Defunding the Police” sounded like an epic disaster.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Ding ding ding… That’s a winner.
John S.
@Emma from FL: Impossible. Every Cuban I have ever met in South Florida came from a wealthy family that owned a vast plantation in Cuba prior to their exile. ?
Apparently there were no poor people pre-Castro.
Betty Cracker
@batguano: Can’t agree that the election played out as predicted. You can make that argument for the presidential race, I guess, but who predicted the Dems would lose ground in the House and maintain minority status in the Senate, as now seems likely? That’s a fucking disaster, and we have to face it.
Kathleen
@rikyrah: Totally agree and thought about that when I saw the Socialism charge hurled at Dems in campaign ads.
Darkrose
@Betty Cracker: He’s an asshole, and many men want to be celebrated for being assholes just like him.
debbie
@Darkrose:
Not at all. We as a party do what we want the country to do: Work for the common good. As the trite saying goes, compromise is not the enemy of the good.
Kathleen
@debbie: TRUTH
Betty Cracker
@Darkrose: Yes, and they showed up! As far as it’s possible to tell right now, progressives showed up for Biden-Harris. The fascists are the problem, not the progressives.
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
The disaster is not the movement, the disaster is that the slogan was too fuzzy and too open to distortion.
Geminid
@sanjeevs: the alarm was being sounded about Miami-Dade, by Rachel Bitecofer among others. And once the Biden campaign was flush with money it put some into the area. But the trump people began their social media campaign targeting Latinos in Florida over a year ago, and it worked.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I remain envious of the fascists’ ability to self-motivate.
schrodingers_cat
@debbie: Agreed, I should have been clear that I too was speaking of the slogans. Police reform is essential.
Immanentize
@John S.: I do! Thank you. I’ll take a colada of cubano this morning.
Darkrose
@debbie: I guess I’m a little confused, then, because you were saying “no big tent”.
There was no “Defund the police” plank in the party platform. Biden explicitly stated that he didn’t want to defund the police, and even fell back on the “few bad apples” cliche. The only people using that slogan were activists, many of whom don’t identify as Democrats. I don’t know how the Democratic Party is supposed to address that, especially if the media narrative focuses on the online fringe rather than the actual candidates.
topclimber
@PsiFighter37: I think maybe the percentage is based on precincts reporting rather than share of vote? Precincts can vary widely in number of voters.
John S.
@debbie: There was nothing wrong with the Chevy Nova as a vehicle other than the fact that no va literally means “is not going” in Spanish, and they could not sell it anywhere south of the border.
rp
What’s the evidence that defund the police had a significant impact on the election?
I simply don’t buy the idea that this is a polling error. You’re telling me the pollsters had an even bigger miss than 2016 and after they erred in favor of the GOP in 2018? Plus, we have evidence from actual votes in 2018 and special elections over the last four years that there’s been a solid shift towards the Dems. I smell massive amounts of ratf*cking and fraud.
guachi
@Betty Cracker: I had people pie me and yell at me last night for saying it was unlikely the Democrats would take the Senate.
It would be a disaster:
No cabinet picks approved. No judges. No stimulus. Government shutdown in the fall.
hueyplong
Gotta admit, there was a bit of darkness here (as in my house) in the wee hours.
Love the trend projections in the three rusty states we always knew we had to have, and man, Georgia would be the best, for many reasons.
If Trump loses by less than the margin of Arizona, it will turn out that McCain had one last thumbs down for him when it mattered most.
negative 1
@Starfish: To many people there’s a difference between attacking an institution and attacking bad actors within it. R’s pretty successfully painted Dems as attacking the institution. I never saw one poll that had that stance as a majority. There seems to be some evidence now (read: this election) that ‘reform’ just meant ‘get rid of the bad ones’.
Cermet
@Patricia Kayden: Wrong number in PA; I did that incorrectly, too. The NYT is wrong (no surprise – they can’t do math either.) It is almost 1.8 million outstanding. Otherwise, he loses even with that high rate.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: They get ample help from both-sides-do-it media
John S.
@guachi: No, you had people pie you for being excessively pessimistic and constantly posting the worst possible take on everything in real time.
debbie
@Darkrose:
Sorry, still trying to wake up. I wasn’t saying kick anyone out of the tent; I’m saying we have got to have a unified message and the discipline not to diverge from it. We have got to put our minor disagreements aside and focus on the only important issue before us: Destroy the GOP. If, as many of us have over the years, we can vote for the lesser of two evils, then certainly we can stop focusing on our differences, pull up our big boy pants, and get the fucking job done.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I think “both sides” is more demotivational than motivational. Right wing media is motivational to them.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker:
Don’t get too excited. It seems like a good deal, but when your life falls apart because you’re making all the wrong decisions, you’ll never figure it out in time.
SenyorDave
@John S.: Its called an opinion. Some people put the best take on everything (see WI, which seems to have slipped away in the last hour), others are more pessimistic.
lowtechcyclist
I sure hope the Dems in those states chose their electors well.
I can only hope Biden pulls out GA and/or PA, to make sure ‘faithless electors’ aren’t a concern.
Immanentize
Although it’s pretty close, it looks like the ranked voting ballot initiative in Mass. is gonna lose.
guachi
@John S.: Have I actually been wrong about anything yet? No.
No. I take that back. I was wrong about Biden winning OH. I wasnt wrong when I said Biden would lose his lead in NC. Or that we wouldn’t be leading or win the Senate seats in NC, ME, MT, IA.
mad citizen
@SenyorDave: WI: 95% in, Biden with a 20,000 vote lead (AP). What do you mean by “slipping away”? Not calling you out or anything, genuinely asking. I’m mostly just reading here at BJ so when I see words like that I wonder what the poster means.
Also (for the jackalariat) aren’t there going to be a bunch of recounts in all of these narrow-margin states?
rikyrah
@raven:
Yesssssss ?
Cermet
Still, WI is too close; if the latest number includes Greenbay, then WI isn’t a sure thing at all. They will count Absentee ballotes now – that might not go in Biden’s favor. This is 3% of the remaining if NYT is accurate.
SFAW
@raven:
Not quite. He also talks — whether directly or by implying such — about how tough he is, all the time.
Starfish
@Darkrose: Exactly. I feel like some commenters here are trying to be the Democrats in disarray. They are trying to eat their own because they don’t like a slogan before the votes are even counted. When you see this type of election going down, your first inclination should not be to comfort the comfortable.
Sab
@John S.:Chevy Novas did actually suck as vehicles
SenyorDave
@mad citizen: I read Biden is down by 10k+ with 98% in. I hope I’m wrong, but I have been told by reliable people that everything you read on the internet is true.
batguano
@Betty Cracker: I’m not saying it doesn’t signal a whole heap of trouble ahead, but everything fell well within the range of predicted outcomes. And that’s not taking into account that polling could never account for dirty tricks, differing rates of ballot spoilage, extra-constitutional shenanigans, etc. Also, the votes aren’t all counted yet and those still out there will tend to favored us. Our hope in the Senate required us to win close races in states were Trump was favored to win, that was always going to be a heavy lift. Plus can men fucking learn to keep it in their pants for once?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Zzyzx:
“A more progressive candidate would have won. Look at the senate numbers, uh, never mind….”
SFAW
@debbie:
Seconded, thirded, etc
NotMax
Before I forget, congratulations to Congressman-elect Kai Kahele, to replace Tulsi Gabbard (who did not run for re-election) on January 3.
John S.
@SenyorDave: No, it’s called a disposition.
p.a.
Is Nevada still on the table? Just heard something on not-hate radio that it’s still a tossup. Recount???
Latinx: not monolithic + religious. Evangelicals making inroads, apparently not lib like African American evangs. Catholic, I guess Liberation Catholicism was sooo 20th Century, maybe they align w Catholic hierarchy. Also too, except for Jews, immigrants tend to ‘pull up the ladder behind them’.
Trump was -800 in Vegas at midnight, Biden now -360! Wild swings!
cokane
@p.a.: It can’t be called yet by a responsible news outlet because of the close margin. But the remaining votes all favor Biden, per NV reporters. It’d take some crazy miracle for it to change.
Emma from FL
@SFAW: yes, but the kind of masculinity we’re talking about is based on loud cockfights by proxy, and a deep strain of fear for the feminine.
Sound familiar?
gene108
@rikyrah:
When we have to work with poorly funded, especially relative to the billionaire funded Republican “grassroots” movements, that are not well coordinated, we end up with a shit ton of self-owns.
Defund the police is bad.
I’d even argue Black Lives Matter (BLM) is less than optimal. One, for the most part BLM was clearly identified as the Bureau of Land Management, and secondly, it left an opening for the All Lives Matter bullshit.
Betty Cracker
Regarding Wisconsin:
cokane
@Emma from FL: some folks bordering on some gross ethnic stereotypes here. It’s worth putting in context that Latinos still voted for Biden by a large margin. It’s also worth noting that the same exit polls that show Trump making inroads with them show him making inroads with black voters as well.
different-church-lady
Still here. And I have immediate in-person emotional support this time that I didn’t have in 2016. Might still take an internet break, but I’m not just a big pile of crazy like last time, so please nobody worry about me personally.
John S.
@NotMax: Congratulations! Glad you have someone representing the people again instead of a deranged cult member.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Good to hear. It’s nerve wracking but not as shocking as 2016.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Baud: This. “Both sides” is the plausible deniability part.
cokane
Nevada also wont start counting again until Thursday! noon eastern time, so it’s not going to be called any time soon.
John S.
@cokane: So… machismo isn’t really a thing? Because it sure as hell seems to exist, and afflicts just as many White folks as non-White folks.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
I was more worried about Wisconsin out of the three.
If he has won Wisconsin ???
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Weirdly, it’s almost like a reverse 2016 — this time it’s Trump who’s watching EC leads evaporate.
A Ghost to Most
I’ll butt in today to say, again, the hard part starts today. Do you have anything left?
cokane
@John S.: i mean, being macho is a thing among black men too? and you could write some awful stereotypes about that. Doesn’t meant they broke for Trump.
If every demographic group voted how latinos voted, Biden would have won in a landslide.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Oh I agree, Ds have to overcome the media narrative which favors the Republicans
gene108
@scottinnj:
The one thing I learned from the Obama years is that policies don’t mean shit with voters. It doesn’t matter how much they help people, like bailing out the auto industry saved MI and OH’s economies, the thing people vote on is attitude.
Does the candidate’s public persona display an attitude the voter can relate to.
Cermet
Both GA and WI are the keys; these could be called today. Obviously, I am assuming MI goes Biden as well as NV.
Baud
@gene108:
I’m coming to that conclusion also.
Emma from FL
@cokane: If you check back on my comments about the election in the past few days you will note I have been screaming about the “hispanic” label because it does not account for social/racial differences among different strains of latin-american descendants in the US. I even went off on poor Guachi when he didn’t really deserve it for it. It’s like conflating all the people descended from England, Poland, Estonia, and Italy “Europeans” and expect that they will act the same.
(added) yes, machismo is a thing. Also the worship of the caudillo, the strongman that comes to save the nation. And the caudillo is 90% of the time a loud-talking macho-man.
burnspbesq
@SenyorDave:
white folks have an unfortunate tendency to see “Hispanics” as an undifferentiated bloc, which is unfortunate because they are anything but. For reasons which I have no hope of understanding, Trump does very well with Cuban and Venezuelan expats in south Florida. Meanwhile, his laughable macho posturing plays well with certain kinds of Mexican men.
topclimber
@negative 1: Except what is “bad” about the majority of police is that they ALWAYS back the blue wall of silence. It makes it almost impossible to get rid of the toxic ones.
ETA: Always a slight exaggeration.
hueyplong
As a boomer white male, I’m pretty hesitant to point fingers at any other demographic for insufficient loyalty to the progressive Democratic brand at election time.
Gin & Tonic
@cokane: WaPo is saying Biden is leading with Hispanic voters in every state, with Florida being the only close one. Graphic.
Soprano2
The worst news in Missouri is that the Republican undoing of the redistricting reforms passed in 2018 with 62% of the vote passed 51-49. That’s bad news for Democrats in MO, because the reforms would have made districts fairer, and Democrats would have had a chance to pick up several seats in the state legislature. (it was for state redistricting only) Not enough to be the majority, but enough to break the Republican supermajority. I’m really disappointed in my fellow Missourians, that they voted to undo a good reform they did just two years ago. I guess the Republican fearmongering about how the reform would cause long, snaky districts that would mean you people in the country would be in a district with “those city folks” got enough people to vote for it to tip the balance.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
Important to remember. People are upset that Trump gained with that block of voters compared to 2016.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Zzyzx: Remember, 2020 was supposed to favor the GOP, it was only Trump screw up that wrecked that.
burnspbesq
@John S.:
If quien es mas macho wasn’t a thing among white men, Ford would sell many fewer big-ass trucks in Texas.
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: The patron saint of socialists scared the Cubans real good.
Gin & Tonic
@hueyplong: Another WaPo graphic I saw indicated that Trump increased his vote share in every major demographic *except* white men, where he declined by 5 points.
Immanentize
Just saw 99% of Wisconsin votes tabulated — Biden up by .7%. 20+K votes. That should do it.
SenyorDave is a shit eating fuck face. Nothing personal…. Just my opinion.
Immanentize
@burnspbesq: Tru dat. And everywhere else too.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The woman in question watches far too many reality TV shows. Trump is a celebrity, not a politician.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Once I saw that Wayne County hadn’t yet been counted in Michigan, I breathed easier. I lived in Wayne County for years. That’s Detroit and the close in suburbs. It will vote heavily, heavily D.
hueyplong
@Gin & Tonic: I find it difficult to believe that Trump went up with suburban women.
Gin & Tonic
@hueyplong: I can’t find that reference now, but as I recall he was up 2 with white women.
Mousebumples
@Immanentize: or SenyorDave is about 4 hours behind on results.
I’ll admit, as a Wisconsinite, i was less confident than I wanted to be last night. The amazing Ben Wikler settled me at about 4-5am eastern when milwaukee results came in.
And I think i need to take a social media vacation when I’m at work later today, or else I won’t get anything done…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Roger Moore: I would also add Harris probably didn’t help with the Hispanics, fair amount of racism and sexism among Hispanics.
On the other hand I suspect Biden chose her because she would help with the Rust Belt states and that’s were this is coming down too.
debbie
@burnspbesq:
Happily though, they’re likely to do that rolling coal thing and destroy their engines.
burnspbesq
Welp, it only took until 7:05 a.m. local time for Warnock’s first fundraising appeal for the runoff to hit my inbox.
‘That race is too damn important. I’m in, and if you can be, you should be.
debbie
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Too many people are one-issue voters.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: How can anyone know that yet? That is yet another poll projection. Maybe yes, maybe no.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
In the America of 2020 most men are overweight*. From my personal lifetime of experience, a lot of men are blowhard braggarts. They’ll brag about how they made out with this or that girl in high school, whether or not it happened, they’ll add a couple of inches to how tall they are, etc.
Also, most guys have never been in any sort of physical altercation or if they did ever get in a fist fight it was in elementary school. And there are a fuck ton of men, who brag about how’d they’d fuck this or that guy up.
Men easily relate to loudmouthed blustering, because so many of them do it themselves.
*Edit: But they still like to think they are a fit 25 year old, even if their forty and heavy. Lord knows, I’ve done this to myself.
Geminid
@Geminid: It’s easy for people, including me, to underestimate the potency of a social media propaganda campaign like the one the trump campaign used in Florida to smear Democrats. Constant repetition month after month, using provocative lies, can form and harden opinions. For a lot of people, social media provide a more vivid “reality” than does the neutral “old” media.
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: I report, you decide.
RedDirtGirl
I guess I thought that I would be rewarded with good news this morning for ignoring the whole election yesterday. Hah!
OzarkHillbilly
@Soprano2: I think the GOP won that one thru obfuscation. A whole lot of folks had no idea what Amendment 3 was until they read it on the ballot and that wording was very misleading.
YY_Sima Qian
I am relieved that Biden appears to be headed to toward a narrow but firm victory, but very dismayed that there is not a wave for the Democrats and resounding repudiation of Trump and his GOP. Unless there has been tampering with vote counts at a massive scale, the vote tallies describe exactly where the US stands as a nation (and I am cognizant that mail-in ballot should pad Biden’s numbers): a slight majority of the sane and reality based holding on by the fingernails against a large minority that care for nothing of the common good, lacking empathy and live in a alternate universe. Many/most of the latter group may still be OK (even fine) people at a personal level, but have no business wielding political power.
A person like Trump should not be anywhere near being a serious Presidential candidate for a major political party, let alone winning the nomination, let alone winning the election, and any amount of Russian interference should not have been in a position to help someone like Trump into the White House. Although Trump had repeatedly revealed exactly who he is during the 2016 campaign, some people might still had been able to plead naiveté in voting for “change”, however reckless that choice was. In 2020, there are no more excuses, with Trump constantly displaying the kind of person and President he is for 4 years, the policy disasters, the tearing down of norms and violations of laws (gleefully enabled by the GOP). No, the US polity is revealing to itself and the world exactly what it is, and each American is revealing exactly who he/she is.
I am just disappointed that, after 8 years of GW Bush’s mis-rule (which actually came back to reality somewhat in the last 2 years), and in midst of a historic economic calamity, the US electorate saw fit to elect the 1st Black man to the Presidency, along with a large cohort of Democrats to Congress (that process actually started in 2006). In 2020, with a historically bad President, in the midst of a historically bad public health calamity, there appears to be no such resounding repudiation. My local Republican Congressman in upstate NY had low single digit wins in 2016 and 2020, have always voted in lock step with the party, and yet is somehow cruising to a blow out win this time around. Perhaps this has always been what the US polity is, it just that the ugly elements have come back to the fore.
I think 2016 and 2020 have also shown that the US is not a really a democracy, not with the anti-democratic Senate, the disproportionate Electoral College, done in by gerrymandering and Citizen United. Yes, the Framers envisioned not a democracy, but constitutional republic. However, even the latter is wavering, with the GOP demolishing every rule and norm and precedent at an astonishing pace at all levels of government, being a collection of the malicious, avaricious, nihilistic, autocratic, cynical and delusional.
Turning things around in the US will take much more than an election, perhaps a generation or two. I will be relieved by a Biden victory, Democrats adding a handful of seats in the House, and 1 or 2 flips in the Senate, but I do not find that much consolation.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: Ha!
The Zen Master: What is the sound of reporting with no link?
Quinerly
I have been awake over 24 hrs. I have to say this. Donald Trump was not a fluke in 2016. There is something deeply wrong with this country. No matter who ran against Trump in 2020 that person would have lost. I truly think Covid will be the reason Biden wins, if he wins.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Immanentize
@RedDirtGirl: You are being so rewarded. You should have seen this place at midnight last night!
debbie
@Quinerly:
Covid may also be why we will win in the future if all these assholes keep spreading it among themselves.
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: better.
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: I guess you just have to trust me, then. Truly a quandary.
Dorothy A. Winsor
This was posted on FB two minutes ago by a friend counting ballots in PA
Quinerly
@debbie: let’s hope. I truly wish that.
Starfish
@gene108: This is a terrible take, Gene. People can’t be abandoning their slogans in response to Republican nonsense because Republican’s will just make mouth noises to oppose everything. Black Lives Matter cannot be surrendered to All Lives Matter. What do we have to give up to allow for their qanon pedophile fever dreams? Perhaps we should give up pizza so they know that we are not pedophiles?
Kattails
@Kathleen: My mother, who lives in FL, bought that “Biden will turn us all socialist” line, plus the babies will be killed at birth, plus some other crap–oh, immigrants should wait their turn just like we did in the old days. I had to control my screaming at her, she’s 90, but FFS. Oh and Biden will turn us all socialist BUT take away our Social Security. Not even coherent, but he did make some not so great calls on SS years ago.
Omnes Omnibus
@PsiFighter37: What are you looking at?
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: I believe you saw something like that. I just am unwilling to accept that what you saw was accurate until, you know, after the election is over. That seems like the most sensible path.
gvg
@YY_Sima Qian: We are a democracy. the problem is that we are also people and aren’t perfect, not even collectively. People have a whole bunch of unattractive issues and sometimes those issues are so large that a democracy does bad things.
It’s better than every other kind of government, but it still is hard work.
I knew about the racism. It is just really hard for me to accept not noticing how dumb Trump and company are. Other people think other flaws are bigger.
The electoral college is undemocratic, but hard to change. See, any flaw that causes one party to win more, gives them no incentive to change it. Until it starts randomly harming both sides, you can’t easily change anything.
Immanentize
@Omnes Omnibus: His ass in a mirror darkly.
The Thin Black Duke
@debbie: I think you’re right. The red states that persist in thinking of Covid-19 as a “hoax” will learn how wrong they are this winter. I will mourn for the innocent lives lost to their stupidity.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: The solution to the social media propaganda problem is so simple and yet so impossible to achieve: people have to be LESS fucking stupid.
NotMax
BTW, Hawaii results (final printout of numbers still to come):
(D) BIDEN / HARRIS 63.8%
(R) TRUMP / PENCE 33.5%
(L) JORGENSEN / COHEN 0.9%
(G) HAWKINS / WALKER 0.6%
(AS) PIERCE / BALLARD 0.2%
(C) BLANKENSHIP / MOHR 0.2%
AS is American Shopping Party
C is Constitution Party of Hawaii
p.a.
Not to look ahead, but, looking ahead: what does tRump foretell for the GOP? Is he sui generis in his appeal? Will bombastic stupidity and racism play for the next nominee AS WELL (it will always play somewhat) in swing states? Would a Tom Cadaver Cotton have done as well in NC, or the rust belt? Can the next man/woman up fake tRumpism as well as the real deal?
Bruce K
@gvg: Was it Churchill who said “democracy is the worst possible form of government, with the exception of all the others that have been tried from time to time”?
germy
SiubhanDuinne
@burnspbesq:
I got lovely thank you notes early this morning from Barbara Bollier, Amy McGrath, and Jaime Harrison.
Elizabelle
@RedDirtGirl: Hi there. I think you will be rewarded with good news (not all of it), but patience, grasshoppers.
RobertB
@gene108: That’s not a beer gut, that’s a tool shed for a sex machine!
(Proud owner of an awning)
Immanentize
@germy: I saw that. That is meaningful progress.
germy
Arizona and New Jersey voted for legal cannabis.
KM in NS
I must admit when I woke up and saw Trump had declared victory that I had a melt down. I don’t think my elderly parents (in a red state) will survive 4 more years. Then I looked at this blog and the CBC and calmed down.
Sideshow Bob
@Quinerly: This is what I was spiralling about last night. I seriously question my religious upbringing. I cannot fathom how so many people who claim to be Christians and/or religious can look at the suffering of others and just go “Meh, better you than me.”
There is something seriously wrong.
Geminid
Well, I hope the Democrats keep intact the electoral infrastructure they built this year(I think we will). Because it looks like we’ll need a blue wave in 2022 to achieve a major advance in, among other areas, climate change policy. Green New Deal or not, the transition to clean energy is happening now. But that transition needs to be turbocharged, and that needs to happen at the federal level. And polled as a stand alone issue, polling shows a large majority of the public wants action on this front.
Sab
Locally we passed our zoo levy. Tim Ryan and Marcia Fudge got reelected. Citywide we passed a proposition that police body cam footage must be released unless prohibited by state law, so that takes it off the table for police union negotiations. (They have only had body cams for a few years, unlike all the neighboring cities.)
Our across the street neighbor with the Trump sign put out her trash from the superspreader halloween party, and it wouldn’t fit in the bin. Haha. So the garbage truck drove right passed it. Normally I would have been neighborly and put the overflow into my bin. But not after that party.
germy
@Immanentize:
I’m focusing on the good news, like Kelly’s win over McSally, Laura Loomer’s loss, Katie Porter’s win, as well as a few of my local races where Democrats fought off crank Republican challengers.
And there’s a few pissed-off Republicans:
SiubhanDuinne
@gene108:
So wait, are you saying that Trump didnt punch his fifth-grade music teacher in the nose?
mad citizen
@gene108: Uncle Rico : How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains?… Yeah… Coach woulda put me in fourth quarter, we would’ve been state champions. No doubt. No doubt in my mind.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@p.a.: Here’s a question I’m already worrying about. If Harris (whom I love) is our nominee in 2024, will these voters vote for a woman POC?
ETA: Also, isn’t the Supreme Court hearing on the ACA today?
Spanky
@Quinerly: Unfortunately, the stupid are outbreeding us. I’m sorry to say that I did not do my part in this regard, for which, again, I’m sorry.
Plus I can’t get a kid to cut the grass if I don’t have any, dammit.
germy
Soprano2
I feel better today, after spending about 3 hours in bed last night doing yoga breathing to try to (unsuccessfully, I might add) stave off what I can only describe as an anxiety or panic attack. I could literally feel the adrenaline coursing through my body, so much so that no amount of deep breathing was able to counteract it. I’ll probably be going to bed at 8 or 9 o’clock tonight, if I even make it through the day.
Oh, and I agree with those who say “defund the police” is a terrible slogan. The actual ideas behind it are good ones, but the slogan gets in the way of actually doing them.
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
Ah, good. I had missed that news. So Georgia’s own Marjorie Taylor Greene won’t have a friend from a neighbouring state to share QAnon conspiracies with.
Immanentize
@germy: Space man win was a happy moment for me. I mean, they shot his wife in the head. Good for Kelly, good for Gifford, good for us.
Spanky
@germy: Well I read that as “cannibals”, and found I was unsurprised by the result.
Something is wrong with me.
James E Powell
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
We’ve got an awful long way to go for that question.
John S.
@Sab: Let he who is without trash fill the empty bin? ?
gvg
I want to mention that someone assumed close votes would trigger recounts. This is not necessarily true, but like a lot of things it’s already encoded in state election laws, in detail, and it’s different in different states. In 2000 I learned this in Florida. Our law is an automatic recount in an election that comes down to a half a percent or less. In a big population like Florida, that is a pretty big number. There was a local Sheriff in a small town where the total vote was just over 500 and it was a couple of votes difference. Those small elections have more recounts. Other states may mandate a larger percent. Some states don’t have recounts. Some state require a candidate to request it and some require the candidate to pay for the recount. Its very specific by state.
The other thing is a comment about Hispanics not being a monolithic voting group….that is true for them, but it surprises me they are overlooking that the mainstream republican voter tends to lump them all together, and assume many are illegals even if they are multiple generations American. Overlooking the violent hate being stoked strikes me as unwise.
Kristine
I finally went to bed around three thirty this morning. Currently feeling like I’ve been hit by something large with wheels moving at speed.
The last several hours have been nerve wracking and unfortunately educational.
LurkerNoLonger
@germy: I also congratulate Cindy!
PST
Interesting fact: Senate run-off elections in Georgia take place on January 5. There will be at least one and maybe two. The new Senate convenes on January 3. So when the Senate meets, two Republicans will be missing. Gov. Newsom can replace Harris by appointment as soon as she resigns, or she can hold off resigning until her inauguration. So, it is possible that the Democrats will, at least briefly, control both Houses of Congress, depending on what happens in the as-yet-uncalled Senate elections. I wonder how much mischief we can do. Keep in mind the deeply disturbing way the Senate refused to seat Al Franken. If Trump is still playing hardball with legal challenges to the election, Democrats might want to keep any prospective Georgia senators waiting while the challenges play out. And since the Senate selects the vice-president if no candidate gets a majority in the electoral college, one wonders if a Trump-Harris administration is logically possible (albeit terribly unlikely).
JML
This has been painful and anxiety-inducing, but the path is starting to look better every hour: WI is Biden. That’s a flip. NV is looking Biden (hold). MI is looking Biden (another flip). And that’s the ballgame. PA is going to take forever…but the numbers are going the right way. GA is trending the right way. Flip both of those and now we’re talking…305 on the EV?
The pandemic effect of this election is one that I think is far more mixed than anyone would like to believe. Yes, it’s helped Biden because of Trump’s incompetent response. But “pandemic fatigue” is a real thing…and it’s hurt Biden. Dem campaigns also didn’t have anywhere near the same kind of field operations they would have in a normal year…how much did that hurt us? Especially in campaigns where they had a gazillion dollars and diminishing returns on tv? (Imagine being able to hire 200 canvassers for an entire quarter without touching anything in your ad budget and putting them on the doors) Phone/text isn’t the same.
Hang in there, y’all. (and come on Georgia!)
Soprano2
Oh, ITA, there was a lot of stuff in there that people had no idea about because it wasn’t in the ballot language. How many people who voted for it know that they can use only citizens over the age of 18 to apportion the districts? I’m so disappointed that they undid a good thing they did two years ago because Republicans convinced them that the new districts would be worse. IMHO the Clean MO people didn’t do enough to get the word out about how bad this actually could be.
germy
@Spanky:
Long pig hero sandwiches will now be served at all Subway locations.
p.a.
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I know. Here in New England there’s talk of joining the Canadian maritimes on Atlantic time. I’m about ready to vote to join as new Canadian provinces.
Somewhere in my computer files there’s a “How to apply for Italian citizenship” file. I qualify (grazie nonno e nonna). Worth a look for dual citizenship; US and It- as well, I think, as EU.
hueyplong
@PST: Is there some arcane rule that would let Mitch stay as Leader for a couple of days?
[Deleted dumb question based on my misreading of PST’s post]
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: I’ll get right on that.
Chyron HR
@germy:
“What do you mean ‘us’, Trumposabe?”
germy
@Spanky:
A few good goats would manage that chore, and you wouldn’t have to do their laundry.
Kristine
@p.a.: I confess I spent some time last night looking into requirements for moving to Canada.
NotMax
@germy
A Donner kebab truck on every corner!
James E Powell
@JML:
Where are you getting Michigan results? The NYT page seems to be behind & stalled.
I wish I could feel as good about Pennsylvania as everyone else, but I guess I have no choice but to hope.
mad citizen
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Perhaps Biden and/or Harris should start having their 2024 rallies (well I was going to say now but remembered COVID) as soon as they fix the virus/vaccine.
Other random thoughts: Remember the R point “at least we don’t have a celebrity (Obama) running?” Haven’t heard that one in many years–that seems to be the whole appeal of shitstain.
Remember the point “can a woman be commander-in-chief”/ “tough on defense” etc.? Hoping that one doesn’t come back after electing non-servers B Clinton, shitstain, and vietnam dodger/Mr. AWOL W Bush.
Will have to see the final numbers but we need to keep getting more and more people to vote, dammit!
sanjeevs
@PST: if they could challenge the results until after The inauguration maybe Biden could get his appointees through
Mai Naem mobile
@debbie: AZ governor Ducey was calling late late last night for AZ not to be called because there were too many votes still outstanding . The GOP needs to figure out this counting.
Omnes Omnibus
@hueyplong: New Senate.
p.a.
2022: 20-ishR, 10-ish D Senators up. Some R retirements IIRC, although after this elec maybe the retirees change their minds since the blowout never materialized.
If Biden wins, given past midterm trends, the Ds may be playing defense in the house.
SiubhanDuinne
@hueyplong:
If they’re both* in runoff elections, by definition that means they haven’t won as of January 5; therefore, their terms will have expired two days earlier.
*Or either, of course.
hueyplong
@Omnes Omnibus: So all McConnell could do is rely on “courtesy?”
Rina99
@Dorothy A. Winsor: If the environment is roughly the same, no. Then again, I think that is true of any nominee. They will listen to their “trusted” sources and allow that to override anything else.
YY_Sima Qian
@gvg: I think Adam L. Silverman mentioned in another post that Biden needs to poll 6 – 8% higher than Trump to be assured of winning the Presidency, due to structural disadvantages. On the basis of this aspect alone, were it any other country, I think most people would be skeptical whether that country is truly democratic. In most other modern democracies, the anti-democratic upper chambers are either rubber stamps or at most advisory bodies. Not so the US Senate. Gerrymandering, as played to the extreme by GOP in the various states, are also profoundly anti-democratic. D winning 40% of the vote but 20% of the House seats (which I recall happened repeatedly in PA)?
Taking things for granted is first step toward decay of democratic governance. I would say the 1st question to seriously and critically answer is whether the US, as it stands today, still a truly democracy? Another question (more relevant foreign policy) is whether the US (and the UK) are still in a position to preach the virtues of democracy to the world. People should not under-estimate how much the Brexit vote and Trump’s election in 2016 damaged not only the reputation of the two nations, but also “Democracy’s” brand around the world (the US and the UK being the two most outspoken ideological proponents). I do not think the 2020 results, however it ultimately turns out, will be all that reassuring to much of the world. Selective blindness toward the slide toward illiberalism and populism (at varying paces) across the world (Poland, Hungary, Serbia, Czechia, Brazil, Mexico, India, even Japan and Taiwan), does not help, either.
Omnes Omnibus
@hueyplong: I haven’t had a lot of sleep, so I am not quite sure what you mean by that.
germy
A well-informed electorate will save the day.
gene108
@Starfish:
My point is we need better slogans to begin with.
At the end of the day you need middle America to be on your side to achieve change. This is not just white people, but other Democratic leaning groups that vote reliably, but are not active in terms of volunteering or donating to campaigns, like most of this commentariat is.
They can be put off by what they perceive as being too radical. They get their news from CNN and NPR and their local paper, etc. They are not active on social media. They have a Facebook account, probably little else.
That’s my point. Activists need to understand they need to win over persuadable “squishy” middle allies, before rolling out slogans.
Omnes Omnibus
@YY_Sima Qian: While you may be correct, I am not sure that this moment is the best one for having that discussion. We are a bit on edge and preoccupied with the results that are currently unfolding in our “democratic” system.
Peale
O.k. I’m back. I just want to say a few positive things. Positive because I think Biden will win. Hopefully, it’s something we can repeat in 4 years. We did hold every state Clinton won, which is something. It is always harder to flip states, and somehow I think we are going to flip all the states that Trump barely won to our column. We needed to find 75,000 votes in WI, MI, and PA and we found them and then some. Sadly, it turns out that there were lots of Trump voters who sat out 2016 as well in those states, so we’re ending up threading the needle. But on the positive side, those lake states are still competive for for us. Had we lost them by greater margins than 2016, I wouldn’t hope for much in the future. And I was worried that that might happen. Going into the year, I didn’t think many people changed their minds.
Arizona is a nice win. If we are complaining about a turn of Hispanic voters away from the party today, please remember that we would not win Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico or Colorado without them. I hope that we can consolidate those gains and finally win a governorship there. I’m not certain what happened in The Rio Grande. It’s disturbing. I think we need to ask Beto why that happened. Texas will be competitive for awhile, so we need to find out why we were outflanked.
as for Florida…it’s voted for the incumbent it voted for in the previous election for my entire life. So I was skeptical that it would even be close. I was actually surprised it was close for Hillary. However if the issue that turned it really is socialism, being soft on Maduro, and anti-semitism, I’m not certain what Biden could have done about it. I’m more concerned that Florida Is lost to us much longer than Texas.
north Carolina is just odd. I think they just voted for whatever incumbent was on the ballot. Must be a great life there. Democrats were hoping for an electorate looking for a change, and the voters there seem to be satisfied, thank you very much. Weird.
YY_Sima Qian
@Omnes Omnibus: True. One step at a time. A Biden victory is a prerequisite, but not sufficient step toward turning the ship around. We work with what we have, and toward what we wish to be. At least a narrow Biden victory probably means that complacency is less likely to set in, as I think happened after the 2008 euphoria.
hueyplong
@Peale: As an NC resident, I’m going to hold off on commentary about this place for a while. What I’m thinking now would not be helpful to share.
Sideshow Bob
@Peale: I can speak to NC a little bit – despite the hemming and hawing from the right, most people (including repubs) liked Gov. Cooper’s strategy on COVID. It helped that his opponent is an even dumber Trump (it’s possible). As for Senate, Cunningham is the biggest POS in the world. Asshole couldn’t keep it in his GD pants when the whole Senate was on the line. He’s running about 50k votes behind Biden and I’m sure that’s people clutching their pearls in disgust at his behavior.
Geminid
@SiubhanDuinne: unfortunately, the Colorado 3rd Congressional District elected pistol packin’ Lauren Boebert, so Green will have a wing(nut) woman. There are some rotten people in the incoming gop freshman class. Two of the nastiest will come from Virginia: Nick Freitas in the 7th, and Bob Good in the 5th.
gene108
@p.a.:
The one thing we do not know about 2022 is how redistributing will look, and Democratic gains in state houses can help level things a bit.
But 2022 looks to be a bad year for Democrats, based on how this year went.
hueyplong
@Geminid: Have they called it for Freitas?
debbie
@Mai Naem mobile:
At the very least.
Sideshow Bob
@gene108: I don’t know – We have 3 senators that were only barely elected in 2016 (CO, NH, NV) but they’ve generally become bluer since then. They have 5 that barely survived or are in hard states (NC, PA, FL, MO, WI). Yeah, NC and FL break our hearts everytime, but WI and PA shouldn’t be horrible.
OGLiberal
@Gin & Tonic: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/11/politics/election-analysis-exit-polls-2016-2020/
OGLiberal
@Gin & Tonic: Probably should have given some context. CNN exits. The shift in the white man votes seems incredible. I mean, it’s huge. Minorities a lot less big but still in Trump’s favor. Biggest surprise – white women with college degrees went from Clinton +7 to Trump +1 – wtf is up with that?
And yes, exit polls are not perfect indicators and probably effect less accurate this year, but still…
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/11/politics/election-analysis-exit-polls-2016-2020/
burnspbesq
AP has put Arizona in Biden’s column, giving him a projected 238 EV. Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan would take him to exactly 270.
OGLiberal
@gene108: Are they whiny babies as well? Because he certainly is.
Geminid
@SiubhanDuinne: unfortunately, the Colorado 3rd Congressional District elected pistol packin’ Lauren Boebert, so Green will have a wing(nut) woman. There are some rotten people in the incoming gop freshman class. Two of the nastiest will come from Virginia: Nick Freitas in the 7th, and Bob Good in the 5th.
@hueyplong: Yeah, Freitas won, and it was not that close. I was surprised. But the 7th district was drawn by a republican General Assembly in 2011, slightly altered by a Civil Rights Act case in 2015 that resulted in Dan McEachin winning the 4th. In 2022 Freitas’s district will be redrawn by more neutral panel created by a constitutional amendment passed yesterday. It will not be as republican. I look for a Spanberger Freitas rematch. trump was an effective GOTV resource for Democrats, but this time he was a potent GOTV asset for republicans. I think the Democrats will retain their motivation, I think, but a trump loss will create a lot of discord and division among the republicans. 2022 could be the blue wave year we hoped for this year.
OGLiberal
@p.a.: That’s the problem with even a close Biden win – the GOP will think they weren’t Trumpy enough, just that their next candidate needs to use his/her inside voice more often.
Of course, I’m going to be happy with a close Biden win. But it’s not going to make the GOP – or Trump voters – reflect on anything.
Geminid
@Geminid: There is good news in the Tidewater VA 2nd Congressional District, where freshman Elaine Luria has a 174,000 to 159,000 vote lead, with 99% of the vote counted. Now that she has gotten past her first election, Luria may hold that seat for a while. The 2nd has it’s share of tea party cranks and religious zealots, but it also has a lot of independents who care more about the navy budget than any social issue. The Norfolk Naval base and related facilities, along with the Huntington-Ingles Shipyard are huge 2nd District employers. Luria is a 44 year old retired Navy Lt. Commander. The Democratic leadership favored her with a seat on the Armed Services Commitee, and she’ll do her part with the naval budget.
Starfish
@gene108: But why are Democrats perceived as too radical? Are they really too radical, or do Republicans get to paint anyone to the left of Trump as a commie?
I say that we cannot live by letting Republicans set up the framework that we live in. That is a loser’s game. These folks saying “Elizabeth Warren would have won” are wrong also.
Miss Bianca
@debbie: Well, one bright(ish) note on that theme: sounds like the Lincoln Project is with us now all the way, if what people are saying about their reaction last night is true.
Miss Bianca
@Geminid: Damn. I was afraid of that. Bitch is dumber than a bag of hammers. Oh, well.