2020 Election Results

[Treedbear]

...
He then noted that one of his opponents, Ted Cruz, called him a pathological liar, someone who believes his own lies. That was before TC became a full-on Trumpie.

TC himself, from May 2016:

This man is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying.

He accuses everybody on that debate stage of lying. And it’s simply a mindless yell. Whatever he does, he accuses everyone else of doing. The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist. A narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen.

Everything in Donald’s world is about Donald. And he combines being a pathological liar, and I say pathological because I actually think Donald, if you hooked him up to a lie-detector test, he could say one thing in the morning, one thing at noon and one thing in the evening, all contradictory and he’ll pass the lie detector test each time. Whatever lie he’s telling, at that minute he believes it.

...
Bullies don’t come from strength, bullies come from weakness. Bullies come from a deep, yawning cavern of insecurity.

Wow. It's like we're living through a remake of Invasion of the Pod People. "Ted. Are you in there?"

 

[lpetrich]

Prof. Philip Bobbitt worries about continuity in government. The President has command over the US's nuclear arsenal, bombers and missiles that carry nuclear bombs.

The continuity of government vulnerability spawned a number of emergency powers granted to the president, some highly classified. We could well face the use of these powers by the president based on his professed belief that the election was irredeemably flawed and that a “coup” against him is underway.

Opinion | John Bolton: Time is running out for Trump — and Republicans who coddle him - The Washington Post

As of this writing, the Republican Party has not suffered permanent damage to its integrity and reputation because of President Trump’s post-election rampaging. This will not be true much longer.

It is simply a truism that Trump has a legal right to pursue all appropriate election-law remedies to ensure an accurate, lawful vote count. To be credible, however, any aggrieved candidate must at some point produce valid legal arguments and persuasive evidence.

Trump has so far failed to do so, and there is no indication he can.

 

[Rhea]

Which is why the true left wing did, in fact, deliver this election to Biden single-handedly. While the Party leadership, on the other hand, was wasting enormous amounts of time and money flirting with supposed Republican turncoats that, it turned out, never existed.

Can you explain what you mean specifically by this? I don’tt understand wha actions you are talking about.

Support for Trump increased on the Right relative to the last election. The only reason he isn't still the Fuhrer is that progressives turned out the vote in a major way.

I’m a progressive, and I turned out (I always have, since 1984).
But are they the only thing that got us over the hump? I hadn’t seen that data.

And is the Party grateful? No, they're villainizing us.

Can you point to what you man by this? How is “the party” doing this? I had not seen it.

It's almost as though they secretly wanted to lose, just so they could blame it on those pesky demands for human rights they keep hearing from their base, and having accidentally won is throwing them off their game.

Really not following here.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Probably what happened is that just like in 2016 Trump cheated but this time he still didn’t win and that makes him furious. That’s why the polls were so far off in both cases. He always accuses others of doing what he himself is actually doing. This is just as likely a scenario as the ones being floated by him right now.

 

[lpetrich]

Opinion | The corrupt bargain between Trump and Republicans is about to unravel - The Washington Post

President Trump needs Republicans to help him validate his big lie that the votes of millions of Americans are illegitimate and that the election is being stolen from him. Meanwhile, Republicans need Trump to keep his voters energized for two big Senate runoffs in Georgia.

This has created a Faustian bargain of sorts: Republicans keep feeding the illusion that the outcome of the presidential race remains in doubt by refusing to say Trump should concede. And Trump keeps screaming that the outcome is fraudulent, which he may or may not actually believe, but either way, it has utility to Republicans because it keeps his voters in a fury.

I think that the Congressional Republicans want to keep it going long enough to get Trumpies to the polls in the Georgia runoffs, even if it unravels afterwards.

But there is a risk that it may unravel before that.

The flaw in this bargain is evident in the fact that Trump is reportedly angry at Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Republicans for not doing quite enough to keep that illusion alive.

This offers some hope that Trump might blow it by opposing the Georgia Republican candidates out of pure spite, as thumping his nose at the Congressional Republicans for not supporting him enough.

 

[lpetrich]

Opinion | The election can’t be ‘stolen.’ But something worse is happening. - The Washington Post

Clearly, the plot to “steal” an election exists only in Trump’s twisted mind. There is no “there” there. But what is going on is something equally sinister: Trump is receiving support from a range of Republican figures, including Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who says congratulations to Biden are premature; a flock of members of Congress from Georgia, who baselessly attack their state’s Republican secretary of state and inexplicably claim their own election victories valid while Biden’s is fraudulent; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who declares the transition will be to a “second Trump administration”; and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who perpetuates the fiction that the outcome is in dispute. The aim is not to steal an election, but to sow doubt about the legitimacy of our democracy — just as the Russians intend. These Republicans aim to keep their base in a constant state of anger and crazed denial. Right-wing media fan the flames; right-wing social media groups pour gasoline on the fire.

Opinion | A furious behind-the-scenes battle to counter Trump’s threat to national security - The Washington Post

President Trump’s senior military and intelligence officials have been warning him strongly against declassifying information about Russia that his advisers say would compromise sensitive collection methods and anger key allies.

An intense battle over this issue has raged within the administration in the days before and after the Nov. 3 presidential election. Trump and his allies want the information public because they believe it would rebut claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin supported Trump in 2016. That may sound like ancient history, but for Trump it remains ground zero — the moment when his political problems began.

Why do his staffers continue to enable him? They should have used the 25th Amendment on him long ago.

 

[blastula]

Trump climbed out of his bunker today to go visit Arlington. He must be stress eating non-stop, looks heavier than ever.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Trump climbed out of his bunker today

...and saw Biden in his shadow, so 6 more weeks of denial.

 

[lpetrich]

Trump's refusal to concede follows his pattern of incompetence and delusions | Richard Wolffe | Opinion | The Guardian

He cuts a tired and bloated figure, to be sure. He tweets less, but he does so in ALL CAPS. All the time. He promises the most amazing revelations and achievements, coming very soon, just like he said they would.

“WE ARE MAKING BIG PROGRESS,” he tweet-shouted on Tuesday. “RESULTS START TO COME NEXT WEEK. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

But next week is when some states begin certifying their votes. The electoral college meets in one month. Now isn’t the time for making progress, or for recycling the slogans of losing campaigns long gone. A week after losing the election, now is the time to deliver the goods, or be delivered for good.

So far, Trump's legal team has filed some 13 lawsuits, and nearly all of them have been dismissed.

One of the few bright spots in an otherwise unremittingly overcast sky was the Pennsylvania and supreme court ruling to segregate ballots that arrived after election day. This epic legal triumph shrunk to bacterial size when Pennsylvania’s secretary of state revealed that the segregated ballots amounted to just 10,000 votes. Joe Biden is currently leading the state’s votes by more than 45,000.

Opinion | ‘Denial and Anger’: Trump and the Republicans - The New York Times - Readers urge the president to accept defeat (“Grow up. Get over it. Move on.”), and worry about the threat of a coup or replacing electors.

Trump's public schedules show little interest in work - CNNPolitics

President Donald Trump made his first public appearance in six days Wednesday when he visited Arlington National Cemetery for a somber ceremony commemorating Veterans Day alongside first lady Melania Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. He did not speak at the event.

But as he mounts a fierce battle to remain in office and refuses to concede the election he lost, Trump has shown little interest in the work of being President. Since he vowed to fight the election results in the wee hours after Election Day, Trump, who has spent four years producing television moments showcasing his office, has made few efforts to show the American people he is still governing.

Instead, he is firing off inflammatory and baseless claims on his social media accounts, many of which have been flagged by Twitter as misinformation, and hitting his golf course.

 

[lpetrich]

Trump meets with election advisors as Biden lead endures - "Wednesday’s meeting came as NBC News reported that there is growing expectation among Trump’s advisors that he will never concede that he lost to Biden, even when ballots are certified in coming weeks around the country."


AOC urges Democrats to ’not fight each other’ - POLITICO

Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a "Blue Dog" Democrat from Virginia, warned colleagues on a private call after the election that "no one should say ‘defund the police’ ever again."

Ocasio-Cortez rejected that criticism on Sunday.

"When we kind of come out swinging not 48 hours after Tuesday, and we don't even have solid data yet, pointing fingers and telling each other what to do, it deepens the division in the party," she said. "And it's irresponsible. It's irresponsible to pour gasoline on what is already very delicate tensions in the party.”

 

[lpetrich]

Donald Trump's administration acting 'more akin to a dictatorship' sparks growing alarm as he denies election defeat - CNNPolitics

President Donald Trump's administration is taking on the characteristics of a tottering regime -- with its loyalty tests, destabilizing attacks on the military chain of command, a deepening bunker mentality and increasingly delusional claims of political victory.

In response, a visibly confident President-elect Joe Biden is going out of his way to project calm amid the deepening chaos, even as Trump and senior Republicans still refuse to acknowledge the President's defeat in a stunning break with America's democratic traditions.

Tlaib lashes out at centrist Dems over election debacle: 'I can't be silent' - POLITICO

Rashida Tlaib isn’t apologizing for wanting to yank money away from bad police departments. She has no second thoughts about her embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement, or for wanting to aggressively fight climate change.

...
But Tlaib and other House progressives don’t want to hear it. It all amounts to unfair blame-casting designed to shame them into staying quiet, they say, right as Democrats gain control of the White House.

“We're not going to be successful if we're silencing districts like mine,” said Tlaib, who told her colleagues something similar during a contentious call last week. “Me not being able to speak on behalf of many of my neighbors right now, many of which are Black neighbors, means me being silenced. I can't be silent.”

“We are not interested in unity that asks people to sacrifice their freedom and their rights any longer,” said Tlaib, whose Michigan district is among the poorest in the country. “And if we truly want to unify our country, we have to really respect every single voice. We say that so willingly when we talk about Trump supporters, but we don't say that willingly for my Black and brown neighbors and from LGBTQ neighbors or marginalized people.”

...
“If [voters] can walk past blighted homes and school closures and pollution to vote for Biden-Harris, when they feel like they don't have anything else, they deserve to be heard,” Tlaib said, choking up as she expressed frustration near the end of an interview this week. “I can’t believe that people are asking them to be quiet.”

I like that. Looks like she's going to fight.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

What will Trump do between now and Jan 20 Inauguration day to sabotage the country?

We know that he's going to try to stir up drama with lawsuits and try to get his base to become violent. What else?

Pardon Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Ross Ulbrecht. Then also issue blanked pardons or commutations for federal prisoners who are in for petty charges.
Pull all troops out of the Mid-East, south Asia, and Africa, so that it will be impossible to ramp back up without sending initial troops in.
Declassify all the material about the US government spying on the US people.
Declassify all the material about US government interference on foreign elections.
Declassify politically motivated political probes into US citizens.
Take Marijuana off the DEA schedule entirely.

You have to admit, if Trump did that on the way out it really would sabotage the Biden administration.

 

[lpetrich]

Progressives said they are “afraid” of a world in which Biden makes bipartisan appeals to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell with limited results.

“That approach to governance could really threaten party unity and the 2022 midterms, because Mitch McConnell's sole goal will be to make Joe Biden swallow as many toxic poison pills as possible that make it harder to campaign in the midterms,” said Waleed Shahid, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats. If McConnell controls the Senate, Shahid said, the fundamental question will be “how much hardball will Democrats play.”

It must also be noted that some Senate Democrats are rather conservative, like Tim Manchin of WV and Dianne Feinstein of CA.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told POLITICO in an interview shortly after the election that Democrats will continue to play defense in swing seats if they don’t establish a cohesive message on race and racism.

“It's not just like some moral question about how you confront racism in elections, but it is now an existential crisis for the Democratic Party,” Ocasio-Cortez said. The problem, she said, is Democrats don't want to talk about race. “Anti-racism plays zero percent of a role in Democratic electoral strategy — zero, explicitly, implicitly,” she continued. “I'm not telling people to virtue signal, but there's just like no plan for it.”

Ocasio-Cortez, like moderates, wasn’t happy with the party’s messaging on climate change, which she said ended on “not the 'Green New Deal' and 'we love fracking.'”

“You don't have to even bring Green New Deal into this,” she said. “Why aren't we talking about creating 20 million jobs, putting a solar panel on every roof. We need to talk in images and sights and sounds.”

Good idea. Images and sights and sounds? That will make it look more vivid and stick in people's minds better.

It’s time, Ocasio-Cortez said, for Democrats to “take our gloves off with Republicans.”

“We're always messaging around bipartisanship and how much we love working with Republicans all the time in a lot of these sensitive areas,” she said. “We need to have an unapologetic agenda, have an actual alternative and countermessaging that is distinct from the Republican Party instead of trying to play to notions of civility. ... I just really hope that it gets through to a lot of people that this idea that we can win over white voters on a civility argument is like not a reliable strategy.”

Being willing to play political hardball will make the Democratic Party will look less wimpy.

 

[Shadowy Man]

What will Trump do between now and Jan 20 Inauguration day to sabotage the country?

We know that he's going to try to stir up drama with lawsuits and try to get his base to become violent. What else?

Pardon Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Ross Ulbrecht. Then also issue blanked pardons or commutations for federal prisoners who are in for petty charges.
Pull all troops out of the Mid-East, south Asia, and Africa, so that it will be impossible to ramp back up without sending initial troops in.
Declassify all the material about the US government spying on the US people.
Declassify all the material about US government interference on foreign elections.
Declassify politically motivated political probes into US citizens.
Take Marijuana off the DEA schedule entirely.

You have to admit, if Trump did that on the way out it really would sabotage the Biden administration.

Actually, the longer he thinks he won the election the less time he’ll have to screw things up before Biden takes over.

 

[Jayjay]

What will Trump do between now and Jan 20 Inauguration day to sabotage the country?

We know that he's going to try to stir up drama with lawsuits and try to get his base to become violent. What else?

Pardon Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Ross Ulbrecht. Then also issue blanked pardons or commutations for federal prisoners who are in for petty charges.
Pull all troops out of the Mid-East, south Asia, and Africa, so that it will be impossible to ramp back up without sending initial troops in.
Declassify all the material about the US government spying on the US people.
Declassify all the material about US government interference on foreign elections.
Declassify politically motivated political probes into US citizens.
Take Marijuana off the DEA schedule entirely.

You have to admit, if Trump did that on the way out it really would sabotage the Biden administration.

Actually, the longer he thinks he won the election the less time he’ll have to screw things up before Biden takes over.

"Dear mr. Trump. You have won the election for realz this time. Come pick up your prize at 7363 State Road, Philadelphia, PA."

 

[fromderinside]

SULKUS reminds me of dump truck.

 

[barbos]

I noticed Biden wins popular vote even without California. So he can be president of both - California and the rest of the USA.

Clinton did not win popular vote in the rest of the USA.

 

[Jokodo]

MAJOR BREAKING NEWS!!!

Trump has been declared the winner of Alaska! This changes everything! Trump becomes the first Republican to win the largest state in America since 2016. With the victory of Alaska, Trump has doubled the landmass he has won in the electoral college, providing him a clear mandate to steal this election!

You are reading to much into the Mercator projection. Alaska is only about 2 1/2 Texases.

 

[lpetrich]

What went wrong for Congressional Democrats in 2020 by New Deal Strategies, Justice Democrats, Sunrise Movement, Data for Progress

Democratic leadership has failed over the years to make sustained investments in field organizing, forcing grassroots organizations to carry the bulk of organizing work in key battleground states on their own. In Arizona​ it was Latino organizers over the past decade, led by groups like ​Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA),​​who delivered record Latino turnout and won statewide for the first time in over 20 years with ​over​ 70% of voting Latinos choosing Biden. In Georgia, after being told it could never become a swing state, it was progressive Black-led organizations like Black Voters Matter, New Georgia Project, and Fair Fight Action who ​registered​ over 800,000 new voters, almost 50% of them under 30 and people of color since 2018 to prepare for this moment. And progressive allies like Way to Win who put $100 million in resources behind these strategies in Arizona, Georgia, and 10 other states.

Then on Ilhan Omar's and Rashida Tlaib's campaign efforts. "Despite an obvious preference by Democratic leadership to focus on the suburbs and former Republican voters rather than working-class communities of color, progressives like Stacey Abrams, Rep. Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib are showing us - through turnout results in their states and cities - where Democrats must invest to build the party."

Then mentioning that "an explicit multiracial, populist message mobilizes and persuades voters." After mentioning how controversial "Black Lives Matter" used to be and how Democrats didn't like to be associated with black athletes kneeling during the national anthem, they note "Conservative Democrats may change the terms and people we blame and fear year-by-year, but Democrats must take on the Republican Party’s divide-and-conquer racism head-on and not demobilize our own base." Over the last half-century, Republicans have used racial divisiveness to great effect. This is Richard Nixon's Southern strategy, and it is part of the transformation of the Republican Party into the party of Jefferson Davis.

They memo does not discuss what a bad image "Defund the Police" conjures up, sad to say, and it does not discusses alternatives to it that capture its intended meaning.

According to an analysis by Tom Bonier of TargetSmart, the protests drove up ​voter registration​, with the earliest signs coming from Georgia, and helped close the enthusiasm gap that plagued Biden into the summer.

Fast forward to election day: Black voters matched and ​exceeded​ white voter participation in key cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee and Atlanta, which delivered the presidency to Biden. Most impressively, in Georgia, young voters skewed heavily Democratic, casting ballots for Biden about 18% more than for Trump - especially young voters of color and young Black voters, 90% of whom ​voted​ for Biden. If Black youth had come out in slightly lower numbers, Biden would lose the state and we would not have the opportunity we do in the Senate.

In effect, they saved the party's hiney, bringing back WI, MI, and PA, and bringing in GA.

But the party's lack of a good economics message was a poor counter to Trump's posing as some economics genius. Though Biden ended up pushing a lite version of a Green New Deal, the rest of the party did not follow along very much.

 

[lpetrich]

"Progressives held their own in swing and R+ districts"

Though election results are still not complete, enough of the votes have now been counted to give a good approximation of the final vote counts. Their results:

• Four of the six House Democrats who lost rank among the ten most conservative Democrats in the House (Peterson, Brindisi, Cunningham, Horn). All six rank among the 22 most conservative.
• Of the 11 most liberal candidates in these swing districts, at least nine are expected to win (all 11 still could). Of the 11 most conservative, only five (maybe six) are expected to win.
• The swing district Democrats who saw the biggest dropoff from their 2018 results were more conservative than those who outperformed their 2018 results.​ At this writing, nine House Democratic candidates outperformed their 2018 results. All nine have an average ideology
  score of 0.34 (more progressive). Meanwhile, the nine Democrats who saw the biggest dropoff from their 2018 margins have an average ideology score of 0.41 (more conservative).
• Of all Democrats running in R+3 districts, the two who received the highest vote share were the most liberal: Katie Porter and Tom Malinowski.
• All of the Democrats in swing districts who are Medicare for All co-sponsors won their re-elections, and all-but-one of the Democrats in swing districts who are Green New Deal co-sponsors won their re-elections.

So it's conservative Democrats who tended to lose.

"On the Senate side, the DSCC’s track record of recruiting has-beens and cookie-cutter candidates who go on to lose winnable races continued." mentioning pushing out Erica Smith in favor of Cal Cunningham in NC. In Georgia, while the DSCC was quick to put support behind Ossoff, it was slow to endorse Warnock. "In the last six years, winnable races that Senate Democrats lost because of poor DSCC recruiting decisions include those run by: Bruce Braley, Cal Cunningham, Katie McGinty, Deborah Ross, Ted Strickland, Patrick Murphy, and more."

No mention of Amy McGrath, a centrist KY candidate that the DSCC endorsed, or of the DSCC and progressive candidates for Senate Paula Jean Swearengin of WV and Marquita Bradshaw of TN.