This is so absurd that we are still tip-toeing around the fact that Biden won:
Joe Biden will win Georgia, CNN projected Friday, striking at the heart of what has been a Republican presidential stronghold for nearly three decades. The former vice president is the first Democratic nominee to triumph in Georgia since Bill Clinton did it in 1992.
Biden’s victory adds 16 electoral votes to his tally, bringing him to 306 — matching President Donald Trump’s 2016 total. With CNN’s projection that Trump will win North Carolina, the final tally is 306-232, a landslide for the President-elect, who flipped five states and a congressional district in Nebraska from red to blue in 2020.
The symmetry provides the President with yet another bitter pill to swallow. Trump has spent years tweeting and talking up his margin of victory against Hillary Clinton — one that has now been turned on its head in a final, national rebuke of his presidency.
And he won by 5 million plus more votes- more even than Reagan vs. Carter, which used to be short hand for asskickings.
Another thing that has been pissing me off is the way people are framing the House election- “We lost seats.” Christ on a crutch, Democrats suck at framing things. We didn’t lose anything. Every two years every single house seat is up for grabs, and this year, like two years ago, we grabbed the majority. We didn’t lose anything. We just didn’t win as many seats as we did in 2018.
So in 2020, we won the House, we clobbered the Republicans in the Presidency, and we can still win the Senate. That’s pretty fucking good.
Baud
That’s not the Dems. That’s people who want to criticize Dems to persuade them to change their approach in some way.
Baud
Also, who is tiptoeing around Biden’s win?
WaterGirl
@Baud: Nancy Pelosi should start replying to every question about the House with: “We won, baby!”
HumboldtBlue
Now, no one is ever going to confuse me with a political strategist, but even my addled brain can spot the infuriating and absurd image of the members of Congress ignoring all common sense when it comes to the virus, who will go ahead with their respective welcome new members dinners. All at the same time smart people across the country are begging us to not gather in large groups for the holidays.
This isn’t just bad optics, this is terrible politics and a fucking galling self-inflicted wound.
And it took 50 seconds for the comment page to load and there is a delay while I am typing.
WaterGirl
What makes me crazy is the people who assume we can’t win the two senate seats in Georgia. Who cares what happened two or three election ago?
Georgie got to see first-hand that their votes really do matter. You think those folks are just gonna one-off their vote, two months later?
WaterGirl
@Baud: The Republicans. The media. Everyone who coddles Trump. Biden is right. This is an embarrassment, and it weakens our democracy.
WaterGirl
@HumboldtBlue: That is a stupid decision.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
The media I’ve seen lately have recognized Biden’s win for days now.
The GOP is craven, but we should call them out by name.
HumboldtBlue
@WaterGirl:
Gobsmackingly. I called Huffman’s office to register my displeasure.
@Baud:
Hell, even Trump and his gang of ghouls knew Biden for days now.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Exactly.
toine
Hear, hear!!!!!
C’mon Democrats, that glass is WAY more than half full !!!
Another Scott
+1 Congratulations Joe, and Team D!
In other news, Nancy at WaMo:
(Emphasis added.)
The GOP cannot win fair elections, and they’ll keep trying to win with every distortion and every underhanded trick they can think of.
Someone else said that (nearly?) every marijuana ballot initiative passed. Democrats should get in front of that and help shape the future of how it’s legalized. It’s good policy, and it cuts the legs off the stools that the GOP monsters try to beat us over the head with…
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I don’t see the media saying it’s a national embarrassment and undemocratic, or calling Trump out for not participating in the peaceful transition of power.
I don’t see anything like that on the Washington Post, and I haven’t seen it linked here. Are they saying stuff like that on the political shows? I don’t watch those, but I would think I would have heard about it if they were.
MazeDancer
@WaterGirl: Thought her comments that they had the majority and 135 gavels was excellent
WaterGirl
@MazeDancer: 135?
HumboldtBlue
I’ve never read the books or watched the movies but I’m sure the majority of folks will enjoy this LOTR/election mashup.
johnnybuck
@WaterGirl: Eh, they didn’t think Biden could win here either, they were wrong about that too.
Fact is both sides attracted a lot of first time voters, so it’ll be interesting to see if the magats come out when the big man aint on the ballot. They didn’t in ’18. I think that’ll be the difference.
toine
@WaterGirl:
Or “Elections have consequences…” while sporting a s**t-eating grin!
randy khan
@WaterGirl:
I think the Georgia seats definitely are winnable, particularly with Warnock on the ballot. Ms. Abrams has shown she knows what to do, Dems will be focused, and Republicans won’t have Trump on the ticket. It will take a lot of work, for sure, but that’s okay.
randy khan
This is the day that Joe Biden became President.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Cole’s statement was that someone was tiptoeing around the fact that Biden won.
johnnybuck
Anecdotal, but I was at a convention in Savannah (masked up) and several republican acquaintances of mine suggested they voted for the libertarian candidate for President, and Perdue for senate which probably explains at least some of Ossoff’s vote lagging behind Biden.
Baud
@johnnybuck:
I guess that’s the most decency we can expect from the GOP.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@johnnybuck: Trump could motivate his voters if he did rallies for the Repub candidates, but I hope he’ll stay true to form and just sulk. Maybe even sic his followers on them for being insufficiently loyal.
bbleh
No no no. Because, you see, Dems Are In Disarray. Ocasio-Cortez! Spanberger! And Senate Republicans are an insuperable force controlled by a single hive mind which will defeat all attempts to oppose their will!
Also, some 60-something white people eating breakfast at an Ohio diner at 10:30 in the morning say they still support Trump!
Now is obviously the time for some Serious Soul-Searching by Democrats, to determine how they can most effectively Reach Across The Aisle and achieve a Grand Compromise. It may in fact already be too late for the Biden Administration, which clearly has not got out of the starting gate the way many had hoped.
mrmoshpotato
@toine: Sadly Pelosi can’t answer questions about Rethuglicans with “Fuck their feelings. The losers!”
Matt McIrvin
@WaterGirl: CNN has actually been pretty good–Jake Tapper has no fucks left to give, is outright calling Trump a liar and delusional and characterizing his position as destructive.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I’ve been meaning to watch CNN more. They seem better than MSNBC from what I’ve been hearing.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: Yeah, Speaker Pelosi can rightfully say “we won, baby.” But losing talented freshmen Reps like Xochitl Torres-Small (NM), Joe Cunningham (SC), and Kendra Horn (NE) still stings. At least Lauren Underwood (IL) squeaked by. I can’t fault Democratic messaging too much, though. The simple fact is that trump is an effective demagogue, and he turned out the Republican vote. In Virginia, he got over 200,000 votes more than in 2016. Biden polled 400,000 more than Clinton did, but freshman Rep. Elaine Luria (VA2nd) still had a close reelection, and Abigail Spanberger’s was even closer.
Johnnybuck
@Baud: trust me, it is.
Eljai
But Brian Williams said the Dems got the top ticket but otherwise had a “bad outing” and need to learn “to talk to folks who don’t shop at Whole Foods or plug their car into a wall at night.” Yeah he really said that. I guess “latte sipping, Volvo driving, coastal elite” was already taken. Win or lose, some mediocre white man on TV gotta scold Democrats, but Republicans never have to answer to anyone
ETA: The data on his own network’s website doesn’t back up his premise at all, but you’re all smart enough to know that.
Cermet
Exactly what I said Nov 3rd. The bull shit media always puts down Dems wins and spins anything positive in a negative light for Dems.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Eljai: BriWi’s been making a fool out of himself for a week now with that “Whole Foods” thing. His longer-standing obsession in with the Ford F150 “the best selling vehicle in America”. As someone pointed out last week, people clipping coupons for the Piggly Wiggly Kroger don’t have big, shiny pick-ups that get 15 MPG, though I bet Brian Williams has one for tooling around near the country place, the “King Ranch” edition, or whatever they call the one with heated seats, sat radio and probably an electric lift to get in. And if his business manager has told him how much it cost, he doesn’t relate that number to the average American household income, or retirement savings of the average 50 year-old
Omnes Omnibus
@Cermet: Yes, you are the smartest person here and no one else ever said or thought such a thing.
Yutsano
Fuck the framing. We won two fucking seats in the Senate! And we stopped an outright majority for the Republicans. We can still get a very slim majority. So let’s fucking do this!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@HumboldtBlue: every day we mock trump and praise Biden wrt leading by example. Dem govs and mayors all over the country are catching holy hell for shutting down bars and asking people to cancel/rethink/zoomify their Thanksgiving. I’m a Pelosi fan and this is just… bewildering.
WaterGirl
@johnnybuck: Where is “here”?
Triumph
As a long-suffering Georgia dem, I am taking copious amounts of joy from all this delayed action. By all means, different outlets call it on different days, give me more excuses to celebrate all over again. Gonna throw down once this stupid f’n recount is done with too.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
No one is perfect. There’s plenty of time for them to change their minds.
Omnes Omnibus
Ahem, I am right here.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thank you for agreeing to serve as an example.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@WaterGirl:
It’s all I’ve seen on CNN. It’s incredible. I guess refusing to concede an election that was clearly lost is a bridge too far for the people who run CNN
toine
@mrmoshpotato: lol… Maybe if she was wearing shades it would get the same message across…
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Damn it! Walked right into that one.
debbie
@HumboldtBlue:
Cute. Did you see the one that used the Avengers? Goofy, but good.
ETA: Crap, didn’t realize that was Facebook. It’s also embedded in this VF article.
Just Chuck
Wasn’t Reagan vs Mondale an even more epic drubbing?
Baud
@Just Chuck:
There have been plenty of bigger wins. But this is a good one because turnout was so high.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: This one is also good because it is now.
HumboldtBlue
@debbie:
I did see that one.
For the Francophiles who struggle to understand the id of the city of Philadelphia this handy guide is a good place to start.
Just Chuck
@Baud: I meant to say it was a bigger win than Reagan over Carter. At least as far as I know. A sea of … blue. The colors weren’t set in stone back then.
Baud
@Just Chuck:
1980 was weird because of a third party candidate.
Kathleen
@Eljai: Brian Williams also listened to Rush Limbaugh so he could hear what “real people” were talking about.
Geminid
@Triumph: Georgia Democrats did flip another Republican House seat, the Georgia 7th won by the very qualified Carolyn Bordeaux. Like the neighboring district won by Lucy McBath in 2018, this suburban Atlanta seat had been Republican for decades.
FlyingToaster
MSNBC this afternoon, just before and after the Doltard’s presser, were basically warning everyone that he was just gonna lie; as soon as he stopped speaking, they came back in and fact-checked his ass (no, Pfizer hasn’t gotten a dime from “Operation Warp Speed”, Andy Cuomo didn’t reject the vaccine from Pfizer, and the numbers he was quoting were pulled out of his ass).
He’s no longer calling into Fox&Fiends, right?
Johnnybuck
@WaterGirl: Georgia
burnspbesq
@Eljai:
I don’t shop at Whole Foods or plug my car into the wall, and I got the Dems’ message loud and clear. Brian should STFU.
evap
@WaterGirl: One thing that worries me is that Ossoff got significantly less votes than Biden did. There were a bunch who voted for Biden and Perdue. It’s all a question of turnout.
RSA
@WaterGirl:
On CSPAN’s twitter feed:
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Geminid: We also lost CA-48 and probably CA-36. We lost CA-25(Katie Hill’s seat) in a special earlier this year and the Republican is currently leading by 100 votes with 14% left to count.
Victor Matheson
Reagan beat Carter by 8.4 million votes, 9.7 percentage points, and by 440 electoral votes.
Reagan beat Mondale by 17.0 million votes, 18.2 percentage points, and 512 electoral votes.
Biden is currently beating Trump by 5.3 million votes, 3.5 percentage points, and 58 electoral votes. The popular vote and percentage margins are likely to grow slightly as the last of the votes come in.
So, yes, big win. The Dems did well and way better than the Reps, but this is nothing like either of the Reagan blowouts. That’s simply not correct by any measure.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Victor Matheson: There were 3 candidates(Reagan, Carter, and Anderson) in 1980 that received a significant number of votes. Reagan got 50.7% of the vote cast, Biden got 50.8%(as of now). Biden got a greater percentage of the vote this year than Reagan got in 1980 against an incumbent President.
HalfAssedHomesteader
Ya know, at the outset I might have been willing to be a somewhat gracious winner for the sake of the nation. But he wanted to go full-on nuts, so fuck him. I want him to suffer maximal public humiliation: He should be paraded down Pennsylvania Ave in a diaper on a leash held by Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton (let’s keep the new President and VP out of it) with throngs of people laughing at him.
WaterGirl
@Johnnybuck: Ah. I misread your comment as being another state they also had not expected to win.
Go Georgia!
WaterGirl
@evap: We’ll have to work our collective asses off, and donate as much as we possibly can.
WaterGirl
@RSA: Most excellent. I apparently have now joined the ranks of those who say X person should say/do this, only to find that they have already done so.
Aleta
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s intellectually dishonest of you.
J R in WV
@Baud:
Thanks, guys, for the great hilarious posts. You guy rock my funny=bones~!!~
Omnes Omnibus
@Aleta: I will have continue living with your continued disapproval of me.
Tractarian
True – it’s hard to be dissatisfied when you end up with 2 out of the 3 branches of federal government (using the Tuberville definition, of course).
The palpable disappointment is mainly about hopes for the future, I would guess. Unfortunately, even if things go our way in both the Georgia run-offs, it won’t be a big enough majority to, say, add states or Supreme Court seats (thank you Sen. Manchin).
And after these results, it’s just hard to imagine Dems keeping the House majority after 2022.
But certainly, if you told me pre-COVID that Biden would win and we’d have a chance at 50 Senate seats, I’d have taken it in an instant.
planetjanet
@WaterGirl: CNN has been pretty good. Here are a few headlines:
“Federal election official blasts Trump’s false election claims as ‘laughable,’ ‘baffling’ and ‘insulting’ ”
“John Kelly blasts Trump for not helping with the transition: ‘The downside to not doing so could be catastrophic’ ”
“Joe Biden’s win grows more decisive each day as votes are counted”
Omnes Omnibus
Why?
planetjanet
@HumboldtBlue:
Nice!
Tractarian
@Omnes Omnibus: Because Dems will have a very narrow majority and the incumbent president’s party almost always loses a bunch of seats in the midterm.
J R in WV
@Tractarian:
Why would anyone think the odds of the Democratic party keeping the house majority in 2022 would not be in our favor?
How long have you been a Republican operative, pretending to be a liberal Democrat??
Really~!!~ Tractarian, what kind of nym is that>? Ancient Rome, right?
Omnes Omnibus
@Tractarian: Okay. I am not sure how reliable historical precedents are going to be for the next few years.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: You saved me from writing that, thank you.
JanieM
@J R in WV:
Well just for shits and giggles:
Definition of Tractarian: a promoter or supporter of the Oxford movement.
And in turn:
The Oxford Movement was a movement of High Church members of the Church of England which eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism.
What the handle implies here I leave as an exercise for someone whose brain is less fried than mine.
Richard
@Eljai: it doesn’t surprise me that Brian Williams said that. He’s a millionaire. He’s been around on tv for too long. He almost certainly doesn’t do his own shopping. I wouldn’t be surprised if he owns one of those “cars that you plug into a wall”. What a hypocrite. We used to call him “Shoe Face” because it looked like the dog poo needed to be scraped off of it.
Uncle Cosmo
I don’t shop at Whole Foods or plug my car into the wall, and I tell you that BriWi is closer to the truth than the high percentage of overcredentialed imbeciles among those who post here.
This election (like 2016) was about one overriding question: status. Mango Mussolini is the hero of all those who believe their American Dream has been stolen from them by “intelleck-chool” lawyers, scientists, officeholders and bureaucrats who sneer at them, mock them, impose stupid laws on them, and tax and fine them mercilessly and give their money and their jobs away to People Who Don’t Deserve It (i.e., who are from other tribes).
Every time we sneered at or mocked Their Champion – and oh, how we enjoyed doing that! – they only seethed hotter to take their revenge in the one place where each high-school dropout is worth exactly as much as a $5,000-per-billable-hour lawyer with an Ivy League “Maggie cum louder” degree: The ballot box.
And until the Democratic Party figures out a way to chip away enough of these sullen, resentful people to marginalize the remainder, we will be charging uphill against massed artillery and machine guns.
Fortunately those of you of whom I post are a minority among Democrats, I’d guess well less than 10% (though you scream and whine disproportionately). The people who actually guide the party are IMO exquisitely aware of their problem, not least President-Elected Uncle Joe, and they will figure out a way forward despite all the noise and mockery from inside the tent.
(Do I sound disgusted? I sure as shit hope so.)