The Commentariat -- November 5, 2020
Afternoon Update:
Joe Biden made a brief statement late Thursday afternoon:
Mrs. McCrabbie: 12:40 pm ET: Updates in vote totals for the undeclared states generally are going in Biden's direction, except for Arizona, where the changes -- so far -- are not critical. However, Biden has not overtaken Trump in Georgia (where it looks like a stretch to suppose he will) or Pennslyvania, where Trump's margin continues to diminish with every ballot dump. Biden's margin has increased in Nevada.
Biden is expected to speak again this afternoon. Trump is in his hideyhole & hasn't been seen since his early-morning crazy-rant Wednesday, tho occasionally he limbers up his Twitter thumbs & emits plaints like "STOP THE COUNT!" & "STOP THE FRAUD!" Very presidential.
The New York Times' live election updates Thursday are here. The Washington Post's live updates, which are free to non-subscribers, are here.
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Election News
Arizona. The newest batch of votes dropping in Arizona (@9:15 pm ET Wednesday) are mostly same-day drop-off votes from Maricopa (Phoenix) County. The first batch heavily favored Trump, & Biden's lead was cut from about 93K to 80K. It has since been cut to about 68K. Despite the AP's call for Biden, it appears Trump could still take Arizona.
The New York Times' live election updates Wednesday are here: "President-Elect Biden delivers very presidential remarks Wednesday afternoon: "The undecided presidential election entered a new phase on Wednesday as former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner of Michigan and Wisconsin, two key swing states that President Trump won four years ago.... The president found himself with few paths remaining to winning the 270 electoral votes needed to win re-election. By Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Biden was holding slim leads in several key states that, if they hold, could propel him to the critical Electoral College threshold and the presidency. The lingering uncertainty of the 2020 campaign was perhaps unsurprising in an election with record-breaking turnout where most ballots were cast before Election Day but many could not be counted until afterward.... With millions of votes yet to be counted across several key states -- there is a reason that news organizations and other usually impatient actors were waiting to declare victors -- Mr. Biden was holding narrow leads in Arizona and Nevada. If Mr. Biden can hold those states, the former vice president could win the election even without Pennsylvania, which has long been viewed as a must-have battleground state."
President-Elect Biden delivers very presidential remarks Wednesday afternoon:
MEANWHILE. Jim Rutenberg & Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times: "With his political path narrowing, President Trump turned to the courts and procedural maneuvers on Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to stave off defeat in the handful of states that will decide the outcome of the bitterly fought election. The president's campaign intervened at the Supreme Court in a case challenging Pennsylvania's plan to count ballots received for up to three days after Election Day. The campaign said it would also file suit in Michigan to halt the counting there while it pursues its demands for better access for the observers it sent to monitor elections boards for signs of malfeasance in tallying ballots, modeled on a similar suit it was pursuing in Nevada. On Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump's team added Georgia to its list of legal targets, seeking a pause in the counting there in the wake of allegations by a Republican poll observer that a small number of ineligible ballots might be counted in one location. In Wisconsin, which along with Michigan was called on Wednesday for his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., the president's campaign announced it would request a recount." ~~~
~~~ Amanda Holpuch of the Guardian: "With millions of votes waiting to be counted in the US presidential election, Donald Trump has effectively threatened to sue his way to re-election. As of Wednesday evening, the president and his campaign had promised to bring the election to the supreme court, sued to halt vote-counting in three battleground states [-- Michigan, Pennsylvania & Georgia --] and requested a recount in [Wisconsin]. But at this moment, there is no evidence the campaign's legal challenges will have a bearing on the election result under the law. Instead, the concern is how litigation plays in the court of public opinion, where the suggestion of fraud in one battleground state could cast doubt on the whole election." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Ron Klain pointed out on MSNBC Wednesday that Trump's suit to halt the vote count in Michigan is a particularly stupid distraction: Biden is ahead & has been declared the projected winner. ~~~
~~~ Rick Hasen: "What to make of all of this [litigation]? First, the effort is to slow the vote in places where the Trump campaign is behind so that these states are not called for Biden leading to a call of the Presidency for him should Biden reach 270 votes. Optically that makes it very hard for Trump. The concomitant effort is to push for further counting where Trump is behind to help him reach 270. On top of that, the hope is that these Hail Mary legal plays could lead to court intervention to throw out votes and help Trump capture one of these states. This is possible but very unlikely.... Finally, and most disturbingly, the effort is perhaps one to cast doubt on the legitimacy of a Biden presidency should he win. We always knew Trump would claim without evidence that fraud cost him the election. These suits let him pile up what might appear to some supporters as evidence but are actually unsupported assertions of illegality."
Isaac Stanley-Becker, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump, his son and top members of his campaign on Wednesday advanced a set of unfounded conspiracy theories about the vote-tallying process to claim that Democrats were rigging the final count. Eric Trump tweeted a video, first pushed out by an account associated with the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, that purported to show someone burning ballots cast for his father. The materials turned out to be sample ballots.... Trump's son and others, including White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, claimed falsely in tweets later hidden by warning labels that the president had won Pennsylvania -- even though no such determination had been made. And the campaign's spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, claimed without evidence that crowd control at a processing center in Detroit was an effort to thwart Trump's chances of reelection."
Alexander Burns & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "With no winner declared in the 2020 presidential race, President Trump appeared in the White House just after 2 a.m. on Wednesday to brazenly claim he had already won the election - and to insist that votes stop being counted even though the ballots of millions of Americans had yet to be tallied. Speaking with a mix of defiance, anger and wonder that the election had not yet been called in his favor, the president recounted his standing in an array of battleground states before falsely declaring: 'Frankly, we did win this election.' No news organizations declared a winner between Mr. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr., and a number of closely contested states still had millions of mail-in ballots to count, in part because state and local Republican officials had insisted that they not be counted until Election Day. Mr. Trump said, without offering any explanation, that 'we'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court,' and added: 'We want all voting to stop.' No elected leader has the right to unilaterally order votes to stop being counted, and Mr. Trump's middle-of-the-night proclamation amounted to a reckless attempt to hijack the electoral process as results in key battleground states were still not final, something without precedent in American politics." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: "Addressing the nation from the White House about 2:30 a.m., Trump challenged the integrity of the vote to an unprecedented and breathtaking degree. The president said the ongoing vote count in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other key battleground states amounted to 'a major fraud on our nation,' and he vowed to file lawsuits to stop it. Claiming a conspiracy to keep from declaring him the victor, Trump said: 'This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ David Bauder & Lynn Elber of the AP: "In a stunning scene in the middle of the night, news organizations rebuked ... Donald Trump after he falsely said on live television that he had won reelection even as votes were still being counted.... CBS News' Nora O'Donnell said Trump was 'castrating the facts' by 'falsely claiming that he has won the election and disenfranchising millions of voters whose ballots have not been counted.' 'Donald Trump is losing right now both in the popular vote and the electoral vote and there are many states left to be called,' ABC News' George Stephanopoulos said. Said NBC News' Savannah Guthrie, 'The fact of the matter is we don't know who won the election.' Guthrie had interrupted Trump's speech to tell viewers that several of Trump's statements were not true.... 'This is an extremely flammable situation and the president just threw a match into it,' said Fox News Channel's Chris Wallace." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Mark Sherman of the AP explains what's going on to Fuckface von Clownstick: "... Donald Trump says he-ll take the presidential election to the Supreme Court, but it's unclear what he means in a country in which vote tabulations routinely continue beyond Election Day, and states largely set the rules for when the count has to end. 'We'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court -- we want all voting to stop,' Trump said early Wednesday. But the voting is over. It's only counting that is taking place across the nation. No state will count absentee votes that are postmarked after Election Day.... Joe Biden's campaign called Trump's statement 'outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Zoe Tillman of BuzzFeed News: "In the early hours of Wednesday..., Donald Trump declared: 'We will be going to the Supreme Court.' That's not how the courts work, though. With rare exceptions that don't apply to the election, no one can simply bring a case to the US Supreme Court.... Regardless of whether the Trump campaign's lawsuits succeed in stopping any ballots from being counted, they've underscored Trump and his campaign's efforts to falsely question the lawfulness of ballot counting that extends beyond Election Day -- something that happens in every election. On Wednesday, dozens of Michigan residents tried to disrupt ballot counting at a site in Detroit, spurred by fake information that spread online of widespread fraud."
Max Greenwood of the Hill: "Joe Biden said early Wednesday that he is on track to win the 2020 presidential election, as vote returns show a narrowing, yet still viable, path to victory for the former vice president. Speaking to supporters at a drive-in election night event in Wilmington, Del., in the early hours of Wednesday, Biden urged patience while election officials across the country tally outstanding ballots. But he projected confidence in his chances of capturing the White House, laying out a path to victory that runs through Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. 'It may take a little longer,' Biden said to honking car horns. 'As I've said all along, it's not my place or Donald Trump's place to declare who won this election. It's put to the American people. But I'm optimistic about the outcome.'" (Also linked yesterday.)
The Long Arm of Trump's Personal Lawyer Bill Barr. Katie Benner of the New York Times: "The Justice Department told federal prosecutors in an email early on Wednesday that the law allowed them to send armed federal officers to ballot-counting locations around the country to investigate potential voter fraud, according to three people who described the message. The email created the specter of the federal government intimidating local election officials or otherwise intervening in vote tallying amid calls by President Trump to end the tabulating in states where he was trailing in the presidential race, former officials said. A law prohibits the stationing of armed federal officers at polls on Election Day. But a top official told prosecutors that the department interpreted the statute to mean that they could send armed federal officers to polling stations and locations where ballots were being counted anytime after that.... [The DOJ official] sent his email about half an hour before Mr. Trump made reckless claims including falsely declaring himself the winner of the election and began calling for election officials to stop counting ballots.... The new legal interpretation about armed officials at vote-counting locations appeared to be another example of the attorney general mirroring Mr. Trump's public posture, former Justice Department officials said."
Giovanni Russonello of the New York Times: "As the results rolled in on Tuesday night, so did a strong sense of déjà vu. Pre-election polls, it appeared, had been misleading once again. While the nation awaits final results from Pennsylvania, Arizona and other key states, it is already clear -- no matter who ends up winning -- that the industry failed to fully account for the missteps that led it to underestimate Donald J. Trump's support four years ago.... It is ... possible, said Patrick Murray, the polling director at Monmouth University, that Republicans' efforts to prevent certain populations from voting easily had a sizable impact -- a factor that pollsters knew would be immeasurable in their surveys.... He added, 'We will never know how many ballots were not delivered by the post office.' But what is now clear based on the ballots that have been counted (and in almost all states, a majority have been) is that there was an overestimation of Mr. Biden's support across the board -- particularly with white voters and with men, preliminary exit polls indicate."
William Saletan of Slate: "It's been a crazy election, and ballots are still being counted, but we can get a few ideas from the exit polls.... First, this electorate seems to have been more conservative than the 2016 electorate. In the 2016 exit polls, conservatives outnumbered liberals by 9 percentage points. In the initial 2020 numbers, the margin is 13 points.... Despite this, Joe Biden held his own by connecting with people in the middle.... Biden won 8 percent of people who said they had voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Trump, in this election, won only 4 percent of those who said they had voted for Clinton. That gap may decide the eventual outcome.... The patterns so far suggest several lessons. One, Democrats are having trouble attracting self-identified Christians. Two, they can't count on the votes of people of color, just because the Republican candidate is overtly racist. Three, they need better turnout on the left. And four, they need to consolidate a majority of independent voters. If they don't fix these problems, they could be looking at difficult maps for a long time to come." --s Firewalled.
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times: "... I fret about Trump's efforts to do Russia's work and delegitimize this election, I also keep wrestling with this question: How is it that so many millions of Americans watched Trump for four years, suffered the pain of his bungling of Covid-19, listened to his stream of lies, observed his attacks on American institutions -- and then voted for him in greater numbers than before?"
Fred Kaplan of Slate: "This [election] raises a much broader, more disturbing question. During the campaign, Biden and many of his surrogates, including former President Barack Obama, one of the most popular men in public life, would recount a few of Trump's inadequacies and say, 'This isn't who we are.' Well, maybe in fact, it is.... Trump may wind up defeated, but Trumpism very much endures." --s Firewalled.
Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "Republicans, buoyed by an unexpectedly strong performance by President Trump in key battlegrounds, grew increasingly confident on Wednesday that they could maintain narrow control of the Senate and make a considerable dent in the size of the Democrats' House majority.... Even as they continued to game out possibilities, Democrats emerged on Wednesday decidedly downcast.... Privately, House Democrats who survived were licking their wounds and contemplating whether leadership changes needed to be made at the party's campaign committee. The losses stung."
Frank Jordans & Seth Borenstein of the AP: "The United States on Wednesday formally left the Paris Agreement, a global pact it helped forge five years ago to avert the threat of catastrophic climate change. The move, long threatened by ... Donald Trump and triggered by his administration a year ago, further isolates Washington in the world but has no immediate impact on international efforts to curb global warming." ~~~
~~~ Mike Murphy of Market Watch: "Hours after the U.S. officially pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Joe Biden said that if elected president, he would immediately rejoin it. 'Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it,' Biden tweeted."
The Trumpidemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Wednesday are here: "The United States on Wednesday recorded over 100,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day for the first time since the pandemic began, bursting past a grim threshold even as the wave of infections engulfing the country shows no sign of receding. Nineteen states have recorded more cases in the last week than in any other seven-day stretch. The total number of cases is expected to continue growing into the night as more states and counties report data." Emphasis added.
Way Beyond the Beltway
Brazil. Tom Phillips of the Guardian: "Jair Bolsonaro's eldest son has been formally accused of embezzlement, money laundering, misappropriation of funds and directing a 'criminal organisation' as sleaze allegations continue to swirl around the family of Brazil's far-right president. Prosecutors in Rio de Janeiro announced late on Tuesday that they had filed the charges against Flávio Bolsonaro, 39, a senator whose affairs have been under the spotlight since the eve of his father's January 2019 inauguration." --s
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