The Never Ending Saga

Election Musings:  So it turns out that Trump was wrong when he said that the virus would go away after Election Day; yesterday there were almost 108,000 new cases and over 1600 deaths.  Those are both staggering figures but with the focus on the still coming in election results sadly they were easy to miss, unless of course you were among the personally affected. Trump, who continues to view the virus and its mitigation as a nuisance akin to Pence’s debate fly rather than a crisis, remains focused on other things, like figuring out how to continue living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  His newest scheme, a variation of what he’s been broadcasting for months, involves demanding the cessation of mail-in ballot counting in Pennsylvania and Georgia while at the same time insisting that the counting goes on in places like Arizona where those votes could benefit him. To that end he tweeted “We have claimed for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers, and the State of North Carolina, each of which has a BIG Trump lead,” and so on. To put his commandment into the kind of Biblical terms that only his base understands: Thou shalt only count votes cast for TRUMP, counting those other ones is a bigly sin.  While Trump was busy with that particular tweet attack, both Michigan and Wisconsin, two of the states where he eked out crucial, slim margin wins in 2016 were called for Biden.  Upset that the efforts of some of his fans, a crowd of threatening characters that invaded a Michigan vote counting location, wasn’t able to preempt that call, Trump now says he will be suing the state for “counting irregularities” and for good measure he’s calling for a Wisconsin recount and also suing Pennsylvania and Georgia and anywhere else where a Biden vote holds the potential to upend his residency plans.  He warned us he would sue, he told us he needed Judge Amy on the Supreme Court to rule in his favor and now, despite all the legal eagles who say he has no grounds and won’t win, he’s following through.  By the way, he’s got Rudy Giuliani on his side and Kushner in charge of strategery so what could go wrong and it is, after all 2020, so who knows?  And no one has seen Attorney General Barr lately, not even at that other site in Maricopa County, Arizona, where more Trumpian fans were doing their best to interfere with vote counting.  Any doubt he would have called that out if those guys were from ANTIFA? 

State of the States: Now to the states that really do still matter.  So far only Fox and AP have put Arizona’s crucial 11 Electoral College votes into Biden’s column which explains why though AP and Fox show Biden with 263 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 214, the others show Biden with 253 (I know that math doesn’t add up but that’s what it is, probably due a difference of opinion about one of those inexplicable single digit counties).  As more votes were counted overnight, Biden’s Arizona lead decreased from 55% to 50.5% compared with Trump’s which is currently at 48.1%.  About 200,000 votes remain uncounted.  So far neither Fox nor AP have changed their call while the other media outlets have not yet called the state, though most view it as likely blue.  The Trump team believes that those remaining votes will obliterate Biden’s lead.  That and a whole lot of hubris explains why the Trump folks were so upset by Fox’s decision to move Arizona electoral votes into Biden’s column that son in law Kushner actually called Fox owner Rupert Murdoch to try to persuade him to force his team to change their projection. The Biden team remains confident that when all the dust settles, those Arizona votes will be theirs.  One word: OY!  We should know soon, not as soon as we want but soon.  As to Pennsylvania, with only 89% of its votes tallied, the state’s 20 electoral votes remain in limbo as do Georgia’s 16 with 96% of their vote counted.  Overnight both races tightened significantly. Trump is still leading in both but in Pennsylvania a lot of urban/suburban blue leaning votes remain uncounted and his lead in Georgia has shrunk to only .4%.  All eyes are also on Nevada and North Carolina.  The race remains tight in Nevada where 6 electoral votes are up for grabs, Biden has a small lead that is expected to grow as a significant number of the uncounted votes come from blue areas, or so those who assert they know say. Trump is leading in North Carolina by 76,000 votes but with 200,000 votes still counted, the Tar Heels and their 15 electoral votes also remain in limbo land.  If Biden pulls off Arizona and Nevada he wins, the other states are gravy, nice but not necessary.  If he doesn’t, well let’s not go there for now. 

Senate:  Susan Collins of Maine is going back to Washington. Sara Gideon, her chief competitor who was supposed to spare us from six more years of pearl clutching and hypocrisy threw in the towel yesterday, so forget about that whole ranked voting thing.  On a more positive note, Michigan’s Gary Peters will also be returning to the Senate. the Democrat’s second most vulnerable Senator is vulnerable no more, last night the AP called his race in his favor.  Though Georgia’s Senator Perdue leads his Democrat contender Jon Ossoff by 2.4% as of this minute he only has 50% of the vote, if his percentage falls below 50% he’ll face a run off on the same day in January that Democratic contender Raphael Warnock goes up against Georgia’s other Republican Senator, accused insider trader Kelly Loeffler, the Senator who asserts that she never ever saw or heard anything about Trump’s Access Hollywood grab em by the you know what tape. And because Alaska is far away and very remote with lots of mail-in ballots, with only 50% of the vote counted the race between incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan and Independent but blue  Dr. Al Gross remains undecided too.