It must feel like death by a thousand paper cuts for the Donald as the mail-in ballots are counted in tight races throughout the Midwest, Southeast and Southwest. Wisconsin and Michigan have now finished counting and gave Joe Biden a slight edge. Wisconsin can be challenged as the difference is less than one percent, but Scott Walker, the former Republican governor, said 20,000 votes is a pretty high hurdle to overcome. When the 2016 vote was challenged, only 131 additional votes were found, and those for Trump.
The Donald's last hope is that he holds onto Georgia, where he has a very narrow 23,000 vote lead, North Carolina and Pennsylvania and somehow magically turns Nevada or Arizona, which resume counting today. However, with only mail-in ballots left to count the prospects look pretty dim for His Orangeness, who is bemoaning all these late-counted ballots despite knowing full well Democrats encouraged their voters to mail in their ballots. This is how this "red mirage" appeared in the Midwest states and Georgia, which still has roughly 100,000 outstanding ballots to be counted in the metro Atlanta area, and could easily swing this state for Biden. However, Trump set up this nightmare scenario when he encouraged his voters to go to the polling centers in person, defying mail-in ballots.
His electorate, which turned out 68 million strong and counting, is fretting the results. That's a 6 million person increase over 2016, so his voters certainly didn't lack for enthusiasm. Some have even pitched up at Arizona counting centers as if their presence will somehow help turn the vote in their Master's favor. It seems that the embattled president needed some encouragement so the Republican governor called him to say there is still a path to winning Arizona. It really makes you wonder how so many people can be so easily deluded by the Don the Con.
We are very fortunate that 72 million persons turned out for Joe Biden, who now leads Trump by close to 4 million votes nationally, and is still not out of the woods when it comes to the electoral college. He holds a very narrow lead in Nevada and has yet to flip Pennsylvania with roughly 1 million mail-in ballots still outstanding. Part of the problem is that US territories like Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia have no electoral votes despite having voted overwhelmingly for Biden. More people live in Puerto Rico than they do in Iowa, which has 6 electoral votes.
Looks like the turnout will be somewhere around 165 million, an astonishing number of voters especially during a pandemic. More than 100 million voted in person. Nothing compares to this in recent years. You apparently have to go all the way back to 1908 to find a similar level of enthusiasm. So, what gives? Why would so many persons turnout, knowing they were potentially putting themselves at risk to coronavirus? Does the fate of the free world depend on their vote?
For some, yes. I saw one of my conservative friends post a meme on facebook that compared the experience to the same feeling of dread just before the second plane hit the World Trade Center in 2001. Others fear Biden is simply serving as a proxy for Kamala Harris, and that she will usher in a black socialist government that will end all white privilege as we know it. Most feel they are being cheated by all these mail-in ballots.
On the flip slide, I saw a lot of anxiety when Trump built up yuge leads in Michigan and Pennsylvania and was holding onto his 5-point edge in Wisconsin into the early morning hours of Wednesday. This "red mirage" was something Democratic pundits expected, knowing that mail-in ballots would be last to be counted in these states because past Republican governors wouldn't allow these ballots to be opened until Election Day. The Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania was bemoaning this lack of canvasing in his state, as it greatly slowed things down, but assured his citizens that all votes will be counted.
As it stands now, Biden has exactly 270 electoral votes if his leads hold up in Nevada and Arizona. Trump is of course disputing this call, "hereby claiming" Michigan as his own despite losing by more than 120,000 votes. This means we will see multiple court challenges that will delay the process for days if not weeks to come. Trump is not going to go away peacefully. Even after these challenges are addressed, it is doubtful he will concede, as he will proclaim the whole process rigged, as he has done repeatedly.
Many Americans don't seem to realize that a ballot is just as valid mailed in as it is filled out at a precinct station. One is not any more potentially fraudulent than the other. After all, our Armed Forces and Diplomatic Corps living abroad all have to mail in their ballots. Even the President chose to vote absentee in Florida, although his wife apparently showed up to her polling booth with her Gucci handbag. It strikes me that we all could use a civics lesson.
While I hope a Biden victory means a return to civility in this country, I'm not holding my breath. This country is deeply divided and it is doubtful that disgruntled Republicans will give Ol' Joe any kind of break, especially Mitch the Turtle, who will be coming back with a conservative majority to the Senate in January. Surprisingly, Democrats failed to flip this Congressional chamber despite holding polling leads in key races throughout the country before Election Day. The biggest surprises were Susan Collins and Joni Ernst, who both managed to hold onto their seats despite strong opposition. There is still hope in Georgia that Rev. Warnock will oust half-billionaire Kelly Loeffler in a run off slated for December, but I think that will only bring their final number to 49 Democratic Senators. Of course, some Republicans might not be so anxious to toe the line with Donald gone.
Assuming the Donald leaves peacefully, what's next? We certainly will not have heard the last of him or his offspring. It is safe to say they will still try to dominate the Republican Party and that we can probably expect another Trump to run in 2024, if not Don the Con himself, assuming he is able to hold up that long. Those last ditch rallies seemed to suck a lot of life out of him, as he was barely holding himself up after as many as five campaign stops in one day.
A hell of a lot of folks identify themselves with Trump for whatever beguiling reasons of their own. You would think the way he brazenly flaunted the pandemic with his yuge outdoor rallies would turn away voters, not inspire them to rush to the polls, but that appears to be exactly what happened. One wonders why Joe didn't make a similar barnstorming effort to shore up support in key states, choosing instead to play it safe. I think his campaign felt it already had enough early votes to overcome any last minute surge by Trumpists, which mercifully turned out to be the case.
However, this election was much closer than anyone imagined. Once again Nate Silver has to go back to his algorithms and ask himself what went wrong. Biden was supposed to easily carry Michigan and Wisconsin, leading by as much as 12 points in late October polls, but the difference was only 2 per cent in Michigan and 0.6 per cent in Wisconsin. Biden also held advantages in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, albeit all within the margin of error. Still remains to be seen what happens in Pennsylvania, where Biden had a 5-point edge heading into Election Day, but currently finds himself trailing Trump by roughly 175,000 votes.
This Trumpism is not an easy thing to sort out. To look at him you can only wonder what so many persons see in him. It seems to go beyond the brusque persona he projects and to an anarchist streak that appears to defy any form of institution. A feeling that goes back to the Glam Rock bands of the 70s when musical groups like Kiss dressed themselves up in outrageous costumes and preened across the stage singing "I wanna rock and roll all nite and party every day." Fuck parental control or any kind of control! I'm an American, dammit!
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