E Day

We’re Here:  It’s Election Day.  The national polls point to Biden winning big, in the meaningless popular vote that is.  A lot of key state polls are frighteningly close, many leaning Biden but within the margin of error.  Ragin’ Cajun James Carville, the former Bill Clinton strategist also known as the Democratic half of the Carville/Matalin power couple says we’re worrying about nothing, that Biden’s going to sail to victory, that he’ll be taking the Senate with him and that we’ll know the presidential race results by 10:00 tonight, though he didn’t specify the time zone.  That sounds great but wildly optimistic, not that it wouldn’t be nice if it turns out that he’s right.  Carville is an outlier, or at the very least the only one who’s doing his wishful thinking out loud as most pundits and pollsters warn that we won’t know for a while, maybe even days, noting that in many key states, including Pennsylvania, some districts won’t begin counting mail-in votes until tomorrow. As to Pennsylvania, commenting on the court decision that allows properly postmarked ballots a few days late to still be counted, last night Trump, who must be really concerned that mail-in votes regardless of when they arrive will doom him, tweeted “The Supreme Court decision on voting in Pennsylvania is a VERY dangerous one.  It will allow rampant and unchecked cheating and will undermine our system of laws.  It will also induce violence in the streets.  Something must be done.”  Neither Facebook nor Twitter were all that happy about that statement, both treated it as voter misinformation.  Judging by all the boarded up store fronts, they’re not the only ones concerned. Even the well protected, already fenced in White House fortress has some new perimeter protection, though at least one entrance will remain open, to let in the 500 or so guests that Trump has invited to attend the victory celebration he plans to hold tonight, the one where he declares victory before key votes are counted.  No masking allowed, of course.  As to that not so fearless bully in chief, clearly future prosecution is on his mind.  He wound up his pre-election pitch by telling another one of his petri dish MAGA crowds that they’re all lucky to have him as president, that’s he the “most innocent man in the history of the United States.”  FLOTUS Melania bookended that by saying that the media is wrong to blame her Donald for his behavior, arguing that it’s okay for him to be irrational, hateful and vindictive because they can be mean too. Okay, I’m paraphrasing but that’s the gist of what the multilingual maven struggled to read off of her teleprompter. 

The COVID Election: Nearly 100 million people have already voted, a number that matches what Dr Debbie Birx expects will be our daily COVID count momentarily.  She waited until yesterday to distribute her internal but conveniently leaked memo detailing how badly the Trump team has and continues to screw up its coronavirus response. Could that be an attempt at some last ditch reputation repair? By the way the CDC says it’s fine for COVID positives to show up at polling places as long as they’re masked, so if you still need to vote, don lots of protective gear before heading out because judging by the number of people I ran into leaving my building at the usually lonely 5 AM hour when I went out for my usual pre-blog writing dog walk, the polls will be very busy today and that’s despite all those attempts by Republicans to squash votes, or at least squash the votes they don’t want.  Mark Elias, the election law lawyer heading up the Democrat’s voter rights legal team notched four more voting rights wins yesterday. Among those was a ruling by a very conservative Federal court judge that upheld the Texas Supreme Court’s decision to allow the inclusion of the 147,000  Harris County votes cast by drive thru voting.  It speaks volumes that the Republican party of Trump and McConnell has given up on trying to appeal to more voters and instead relies on fear, suppression and gerrymandering.  That’s the Republican party that continues to lose support from within, yesterday Ryan Mahoney, who was RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel’s communication director up until last year, tweeted out a copy of his filled in ballot saying he was “proud to vote for @JoeBiden.”  Here’s hoping, all fingers crossed, that he’s got plenty of company. See you on the other side, whenever that might be. 

#Vote #WearAMask  Stay safe!