2020 Election Results

[lpetrich]

From the NYT's live election updates:

Maggie Haberman:
In his first remarks to reporters in two days, Trump delivered a brief statement filled with egregious falsehoods and smears about the election process.

Adam Nagourney in Los Angeles:
Trump’s remarks had a farewell tone to them as he listed all the obstacles that he is blaming for any loss. The downbeat contrast from his election night tone was startling.

“If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” Trump said.

Trump continues to be ahead in PA and GA, but by smaller and smaller margins. As I write this, he is ahead by 0.74% in PA and 0.05% in GA. I've done some extrapolation, and I think it likely that both states will end up with Biden ahead in them. Most likely PA, but maybe also GA. I estimate from extrapolating from the margin at 75% of the vote that Biden will be 2.8% ahead in PA and 0.7% ahead in GA.

If Biden gets PA, this will be enough to protect him from losing both AZ and NV. Something that might happen for both states, giving vote-counting trends.

As to the rest of the Republican Party,
Jon Favreau on Twitter: "Just remember: with incredibly few exceptions, Republican politicians stood by this man for the last four years.

They were on board with everything." / Twitter

 

[Treedbear]

Didn't like the way MSNBC cut Trump's live press conference (sans questions) off after the first sentence. Then they have Nichol Wallace come on again after he's done and start trying to justify what they did. They forced me to switch down one channel to FoxNews to hear what BS he had to deliver. I don't appreciate their edifying what is and isn't news. Fortunately Maddow didn't back them up. Quite embarrassing.

When almost everything that comes out of Trump's mouth is a lie, I'd cut the news networks some slack for cutting away when he starts to lie.
...

So where would you decide to censor what I get to see and hear him saying or doing? Almost everything I suppose. And instead I get to have Nicole Wallace explain it to me. How about everyone drops the ruse and stops pretending they're trying to protect me from information they think I can't handle.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Biden has PA probably by 150,000 to 200,000 votes.

Based on my numbers and extrapolating in Georgia, Biden, at best, has about 6,500 net votes left to get, a 4,000 or so vote edge in his favor. Then we go to military ballots and other stuff that could be laying around on the floor. I don't know if a 4,000 vote lead in Georgia is enough to overcome... who know how many outstanding ballots.

 

[crazyfingers]

Didn't like the way MSNBC cut Trump's live press conference (sans questions) off after the first sentence. Then they have Nichol Wallace come on again after he's done and start trying to justify what they did. They forced me to switch down one channel to FoxNews to hear what BS he had to deliver. I don't appreciate their edifying what is and isn't news. Fortunately Maddow didn't back them up. Quite embarrassing.

When almost everything that comes out of Trump's mouth is a lie, I'd cut the news networks some slack for cutting away when he starts to lie.
...

So where would you decide to censor what I get to see and hear him saying or doing? Almost everything I suppose. And instead I get to have Nicole Wallace explain it to me. How about everyone drops the ruse and stops pretending they're trying to protect me from information they think I can't handle.

He simply does not deserve coverage if all he is going to do is lie.

 

[crazyfingers]

Biden has PA probably by 150,000 to 200,000 votes.

Based on my numbers and extrapolating, Biden, at best, has about 6,500 net votes left to get, a 4,000 or so vote edge in his favor. Then we go to military ballots and other stuff that could be laying around on the floor. I don't know if a 4,000 vote lead in Georgia is enough to overcome... who know how many outstanding ballots.

I don't follow your numbers. The first sentence vs the rest of your post don't compute to me.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Biden has PA probably by 150,000 to 200,000 votes.

Based on my numbers and extrapolating in Georgia, Biden, at best, has about 6,500 net votes left to get, a 4,000 or so vote edge in his favor. Then we go to military ballots and other stuff that could be laying around on the floor. I don't know if a 4,000 vote lead in Georgia is enough to overcome... who know how many outstanding ballots.

I don't follow your numbers. The first sentence vs the rest of your post don't compute to me.

Sorry. Fixed it.

 

[Treedbear]

So where would you decide to censor what I get to see and hear him saying or doing? Almost everything I suppose. And instead I get to have Nicole Wallace explain it to me. How about everyone drops the ruse and stops pretending they're trying to protect me from information they think I can't handle.

He simply does not deserve coverage if all he is going to do is lie.

I didn't want to go there but it did seem they did it out of spite. It's not a matter of what he deserves. I deserve to witness major events as they are unfolding in history including the meltdown of the President. That was the first time he'd made an appearance since election night and he looked like something the cat dragged in. They slipped up and then tried to put some lipstick on it. Thank goodness Maddow wouldn't go along with it when they tried to drag her in.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

WaPo keeps futzing with the “% counted” figures. They had NC at 99% yesterday, now they say only 95%. GA % was lowered too.

If I were a right-winger, the fact that Georgia keeps having 'about 50,000 absentee ballots to count' would be piquing my attention. It seems like they just don't have a good handle on the total number of remaining absentee ballots.

I think Georgia has a facility down due to a pipe break.

 

[Jarhyn]

Didn't like the way MSNBC cut Trump's live press conference (sans questions) off after the first sentence. Then they have Nichol Wallace come on again after he's done and start trying to justify what they did. They forced me to switch down one channel to FoxNews to hear what BS he had to deliver. I don't appreciate their edifying what is and isn't news. Fortunately Maddow didn't back them up. Quite embarrassing.

When almost everything that comes out of Trump's mouth is a lie, I'd cut the news networks some slack for cutting away when he starts to lie.
...

So where would you decide to censor what I get to see and hear him saying or doing? Almost everything I suppose. And instead I get to have Nicole Wallace explain it to me. How about everyone drops the ruse and stops pretending they're trying to protect me from information they think I can't handle.

I would decide the right of the free press to give just as much air to tRump's lies as Faux Noise "entertainment" gave to the democrats at all in the impeachment hearing. They were playing to a cut camera, but now it's NoT FrEe sPeECh to do the same thing to a shameful lie.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I'm looking at the data on Google, from AP. Does anyone know why Michigan (50.6%/47.9% with 99% reporting) hasn't been called? Likewise, New Hampshire (52.8%/45.6% with 99% reporting)? For that matter, Florida (47.9%/51.2% with 99% reporting) and Iowa (45%/53.2% with 99% reporting)?

Note that other than New Hampshire, His Flatulence can only afford to lose New Hampshire, he must win every other one.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Georgia - 1,775 vote lead for Trump. Clayton county says they are in it tonight to finish it.

I'm looking at the data on Google, from AP. Does anyone know why Michigan (50.6%/47.9% with 99% reporting) hasn't been called? Likewise, New Hampshire (52.8%/45.6% with 99% reporting)? For that matter, Florida (47.9%/51.2% with 99% reporting) and Iowa (45%/53.2% with 99% reporting)?

Note that other than New Hampshire, His Flatulence can only afford to lose New Hampshire, he must win every other one.

Are there outstanding mail-in ballots that haven't arrived and there is a deadline for post-election receiving, presuming a legal postmark? That is why NC isn't called yet at least. Can't think of any other reason.

 

[blastula]

poor guy

[TWEET]https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1324501050276171778?s=20[/TWEET]

 

[blastula]

Out in the open

[TWEET]https://twitter.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1324478272734986241?s=20[/TWEET]

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

How fucked up has the Trump Administration been? They have forgotten what you are supposed to not say out loud... on tv... to a national audience.

And as a reminder, it is 2020, so this election isn't going to ever end.

 

[Treedbear]

Biden just past the +4 million mark on the popular vote.

 

[crazyfingers]

Biden just past the +4 million mark on the popular vote.

You beat me to it.

 

[lpetrich]

Georgia's vote counters seem to have gone to sleep for the night, but Pennsylvania's are still active. I'll quote the NYT:

Nick Corasaniti, in Philadelphia:
There are roughly 175,000 absentee ballots still to count in Pennsylvania, including more than 58,000 in Philadelphia. Major counties like Philadelphia will keep counting through the night.

Nick Corasaniti, in Philadelphia:
Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania is now less than 24,000 votes after more results trickled in from Bucks and Delaware counties.

Trump's lead in PA continues to decline. It has now reached 0.35%.

Biden seems confident that he is likely to win, and Trump seems like he is expecting to be defeated -- defeated fraudulently, of course.

 

[lpetrich]

Centrist House Democrats lash out at liberal colleagues, blame far-left views for costing the party seats - The Washington Post

An angry dispute erupted among House Democrats on Thursday, with centrist members blasting their liberal colleagues during a private conference call for pushing far-left views that cost the party seats in Tuesday’s election that they had worked hard to win two years ago.

An angry dispute erupted among House Democrats on Thursday, with centrist members blasting their liberal colleagues during a private conference call for pushing far-left views that cost the party seats in Tuesday’s election that they had worked hard to win two years ago.

...
Party leaders had expressed certainty that Trump’s divisiveness and mishandling of the pandemic would help them expand their majority with wins in GOP-held districts — and yet they lost at least a half-dozen seats and failed to retake the Senate. The explanation laid out by centrists, according to multiple people who were on the call and spoke on the condition of anonymity, is that Republicans were easily able to paint them all as socialists and radical leftists who endorse far-left positions such as defunding the police.

“We need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again. . . . We lost good members because of that,” Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), who narrowly leads in her reelection bid, said heatedly. “If we are classifying Tuesday as a success . . . we will get f---ing torn apart in 2022.”

Other centrists, including Rep. Marc Veasey of Texas, made similar points. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Florida Democrat who suffered an unexpected loss to a Republican challenger, argued through tears that the party’s infighting on Twitter needs to stop.

Liberals, meanwhile, fired back. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, argued that Democrats shouldn’t single out people and ideas that energize the party base. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a self-described democratic socialist, grew angry, accusing her colleagues of only being interested in appealing to White people in suburbia.

“To be real, it sounds like you are saying stop pushing for what Black folks want,” she said.

It's disappointing that it is not the Republicans who are squabbling. But if Trump is defeated, as he is likely to be, then it will be the Republicans' turn to squabble.

 

[lpetrich]

“There has to be a reckoning within our ranks about this because a lot of Justice Democrats don’t give a damn about the Democratic Party. . . . They’re all about purity and orthodoxy, and it is damaging our opportunities.”

In response, Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats, blamed the House Democrats for their own failures.

“They had one job and they blew it,” she said in a statement for this story. “We need a Democratic Party that stands for something more than just being anti-Trump.”

The frustration was evident during the Thursday call, when moderates who won in Trump districts vented about how the use of some language on the left — such as the word “socialism” — is causing problems with those in middle America. But Jayapal, speaking for many Progressive Caucus members, argued that Democrats have had the highest turnout in urban areas in years, including among people of color.

Democrats lost in 2016, she continued, because they didn’t turn out the base.

Does that mean that the Democratic Party now has the problem that the Republican Party has?

 

[lpetrich]

Trump?s attacks on vote counts seem to follow an authoritarian playbook - The Washington Post

President Trump is fond of the phrase “law and order,” which he sometimes tweets in all-caps as a succinct projection of strength and control. His relationship with the related concept of the “rule of law” is more complicated.

...
Trump’s attempts to brand legal election practices as fraud and to use the courts — one pillar in the nation’s democratic architecture — to intervene in the counting of votes — another pillar — are the latest examples of what has long been his malleable view of the democratic system.

Trump jokes about how easy his authoritarian-leader friends have it, leaders like Vladimir Putin.

At home, Putin has gradually consolidated power and undermined the independence of the judiciary and legislature. Critics have accused him of enriching himself in office and changing laws to suit himself and his family. He has also assured that he can remain in power until 2036. A hallmark of his dealings with the West, however, is to point to international rules and procedures he claims Russia is following and others are not.

Trump's idea of rule of law is much like Putin's.

As he ran for reelection this year, Trump baselessly called for Biden, former president Barack Obama, 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and several other Democrats to be prosecuted or jailed.

He has branded House impeachment manager Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) a criminal and called the investigation fraudulent.

He demanded that Attorney General William Barr investigate how the Obama Administration investigated possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He wanted a report due out Nov 3. Seems like Trump wanted a repeat of the 2016 Comey report on Hillary Clinton's e-mails. But he did not get what he wanted.

Barr got the job because his predecessor Jeff Sessions would not interfere with an investigation into collusion with Russia.

Sessions said he had followed the rule of law.

Trump was livid and called Sessions “weak.”

“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” he fumed to aides and friends, referring to the legendarily ruthless New York lawyer.

Trump wanted another conservative in the Supreme Court so as to be able to get that court to do for him what it did for George Bush II back in 2000.