ELECTION WEEK DAY FIVE

UPDATE BIDEN BEATS TRUMP Win in Pennsylvania puts Biden over 270. 

 OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS                                         OVER  

2020 is the year that the US recognized that in the future we will have election weeks, not election days. From 1788 through 1964, presidential votes were hand counted and the results were usually available within the day. As electronic voting and optical scanning systems have come on line, the final votes are taking longer and longer to count. By the 2036 it will take the month of November to determine a winner in the presidential race and by 2052 it will take a year. Technology marches on. 

Here is your election round-up: 

In Nevada, they have scheduled next Thursday between two and four as a good time to resume the count. In Pennsylvania, Allegheny County Officials announced they have found over twenty-two thousand provisional ballots that may swing the election for President Ford over challenger Jimmy Carter.

United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito referred a republican challenge filed early Friday morning to including the votes of California and New York in the electoral college to the entire court for consideration. "We all know how New York and California will vote, so there is no need to count them in the electoral college" the lawsuit maintained. "Without these votes, Joe Biden could not win the presidency, so the vote count in Pennsylvania and Georgia should stop immediately."  Justice Kavanaugh signaled that the reasoning resonated with him "Votes in a Democracy could undermine the principles of federalism and should be treated with a wary eye" the new Justice wrote. 

In the White House,  President Trump tweeted murky pictures of Bigfoot voting in Clark County, Nevada,

Note the Biden Ballot in his left paw/hand

  and the Loch Ness Monster tossing his ballot on the shores of Lake Erie for counting in Michigan. 

The Biden ballot is seen to the very right of the neck of Lochie just at the water line. Other editions of the photo show a joyous Hillary Clinton on the shoreline ready to catch the ballot. 

"More voter fraud!" POTUS tweeted. 

QAnon opened Facebook pages alleging that children in  forced labor in Georgia Pizza restaurants were being forced to fill out thousands of ballots for Biden. Members of the New York Times would then sneak the ballots into voting centers in Atlanta. Vice President Pence urged all Republicans in Georgia to order pizzas "so those poor children will be forced to make pies and cannot vote for Biden." The  Papa Johns servers in Atlanta have since crashed. 

And finally these two nuggets: 1)Florida Governor Ron DeSantis offered to send Florida Poll workers to states still counting ballots: "Florida has a long history in affecting Presidential elections, and we would like to lend our expertise to those states who need a helping hand."   

2) In a programming change, Fox News announced that beginning January 21, 2021, the news channel would air reruns of the General Hospital Soap Opera from 6 am to 11pm, and would break in for news updates if needed. "We are not expecting any news for the next four years" said Tiffany Trump, new head of Fox programming. 

TOO CLOSE TO CALL

UPDATE 7:20 am: With 92% of the vote counted in Wisconsin, Biden's lead is expanding and we feel secure in our call that he wins Wisconsin. If he doesn't win Wisconsin, Biden  can't win the presidency without flipping Georgia.  

Also- not that it matters, but Biden will win the popular vote. 

Once you wake up Wednesday morning and come to our fair blog, the headline is "Too Close To Call."

The second headline is that the President repeated his performance in 2016, which is this- voters, mostly high-school educated, disaffected, and white who live in rural areas of battleground states and are rarely polled- turned out in force for Donald Trump. Except in Florida, where Cuban Hispanic voters abandoned the Democratic party and responded to allegations that Joe Biden was a socialist. 

Here is our electoral map scenarios. 

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

SCENARIO ONE BIDEN TAKES NEVADA. 

Nevada is Clark County and then tumbleweeds and rattlesnakes everywhere else. In Clark with 84% of the vote counted at 6:20 am, Biden has 84% of the vote with 800,000 votes cast. Biden wins Nevada. 

He now needs Michigan OR Pennsylvania to get to 270. Picking up the one undecided electoral vote in Maine will also help Biden. Trump responds by challenging the vote in Nevada where there are allegations of fraud and late voting.  In this scenario Biden barely loses Georgia. Georgia will be close but Biden is about 50,000 in the hole that we do not see him making up after the Democratic areas are counted. 

SCENARIO TWO  BIDEN WINS MICHIGAN AND NEVADA 

As we write this, Biden is winning Wayne County by 20%. 48% of the vote is counted with 460,00 votes counted and Trump in the lead in the State by 190,000 votes. So assume Biden nets an additional 150,000 votes, it is not enough. In the other counties, Trump will net 30,000. So Biden is down 70,000 votes. Enter the Absentee ballots in Michigan. Uhho... Can you spell "Lawsuit" Al Gore? 15% of the Michigan absentee ballots have been counted. Biden leads 60-40, with one million votes counted. So if the trend continues even with Biden up 55-45, Biden wins Michigan. But he needs the absentee ballots to win. If he does, he is POTUS 46. 

SCENARIO THREE BIDEN WINS PENNSYLVANIA. VERY UNLIKELY

Trump is up 610,000 votes with 75% counted. Philadelphia is the big Biden prize. He is winning 75-25% with 55% counted of the 460,000 votes. So assume another 420,000 votes are counted and Biden wins 75% of those- Biden nets 220,000. Not enough. The remaining largest counties like Allegheny (Pittsburgh) and Delaware and Montgomery, they have all counted around 75% of their votes and Biden generally leads by 9-10%. We did the math and it does not appear to be enough. Biden will not win Pennsylvania. But it does not matter as long as Joe wins Michigan and Nevada. 

SCEARIO FOUR. TRUMP MAINTAINS LEADS IN PENNSYLVANIA AND MICHIGAN. Then it is over Johnny. Four more years of MAGA

Wildcard. If your head is hurting like ours is, then don't even try the math in Georgia. But this much we know, Biden is down but could net at least an additional 120,000 votes which is just barely enough to throw the State to Joe. In our view, it is all coming down to Michigan, Nevada and potentially Georgia. Put another way, Biden actually has a better path to winning Georgia then he does Pennsylvania. Trump's lawsuit in Pennsylvania does not matter. But the lawsuit in Nevada does. This assumes that Biden's lead in Wisconsin is safe. When you roll it all back, it is Biden flipping Arizona and Wisconsin and Michigan  from 2020 and holding Nevada that gave him a non-Pennsylvania path to the presidency.

Meanwhile the Hialeah school board race has the nation transfixed. More on this shortly. 

THE TWELFTH PART TWO

 We have some difficult predictions for election day. Make no mistake, our very democracy is at stake this election day and the days that will follow. 

First: there will be violence at polling stations, instigated by right-wing white-supremacists who rightly believe the President wants them to privately police (non-existent) voter fraud.  The violence may tragically include gunfire. They shoot up schools, so why not polling places (some of which are at schools).  Two likely cities to experience violence and disruption: Miami and Philadelphia, where large democratic margins are needed to offset Republican majorities in other parts of the two states. These thugs will also be recording people standing in lines. It is not going to be pretty. But hang in there. We are Americans. We do not give up or give in.  We are not bullied by thugs. And a new dawn is coming. 

Second: The President has the unfettered authority under Article Two of the Constitution to nationalize State National Guards and order ballots seized and order  patrols and curfews to stop protests. In certain places like Portland, Oregon, Chicago, and Philadelphia, there could be significant social unrest on both sides. 

Third: Expect foreign interference in state election tabulations. Electronic attacks could shut down the ability to tabulate votes. Once midnight comes, if Trump is ahead in any particular state, expect lawsuits to stop the count. Even innocuous problems will be overblown. An old CIA intelligence rule is that the truth is the best lie. Think about that. If there are no foreign influences in the election, but it appears there are- the actual result will be in dispute. Iran, Russia, China, and Trump's old friend North Korea all have reasons to attempt to disrupt the count. 

    The president has already attacked mail-in ballots. In some states ballots postmarked November 3 will be counted. In other states, ballots that do not arrive by November 3 will not be counted. The rule is not uniform and we could see wild swings in vote totals, especially in Pennsylvania where millions have voted by mail or voted early. Justice Kavanaugh has already signaled that a quick count is preferred to having every vote counted. It worked once when the SCOTUS stopped the count in Florida and handed the election to GW Bush. It could work again and hand Trump a reelection. 

Item: The NY Times quoted a senior intelligence official: "That guy you saw in the debate- bullying, ridiculing, manic, boasting, fabricating, relentlessly interrupting...that's really him. Not the myth that's been created. That's Trump."

Item: The NY Times quoted another government official: "He has done nothing that's a constant, except acting in his own interest. And that's how he's going to be thinking, every step of the way come November 3." 

Item: Early in his first term Trump wanted to send the Marines to the border to shoot migrants crossing the Rio Grande.   His chief of Staff General Jim Kelly told him "It's illegal sir and the kids, they're good kids, they just won't do it." 

Item: Trump wanted to invade Venezuela but the Joint Chiefs refused. 

Look around you. Back when you could be in a room with ten people, four of them were not college educated and feel angry and disenfranchised and support Trump the despot. Uneducated, they do not know any amendment but the Second. They do not understand the value the United States gets from alliances around the world. They are angry at people of color who they think took their jobs. They chant "lock her up" when Hillary Clinton's name is mentioned, or the Governor of Michigan, or Kamala Harris. You think Germany 1925-1940 was an aberration? Think again. A scared populace can be cowed by a dictator-liar. It's why the same 40% of Americans who support Trump do not think masks work, hate Dr. Anthony Faucci (SEE BELOW), and believe the virus is a fake media creation and that it will fade and that the number of Covid-19 deaths has been inflated by doctors who get an extra two thousand dollars for labeling a death Covid related. 

These are dark and dangerous times. But those of us who believe in democracy and science and the power of the mind over the gun need to hold on. A new dawn is coming. The sun will rise and the truth will out. 

"Elections belong to the people. If they decide to turn their behinds to the fire and burn their behinds, then they will have to sit on their blisters."
Abraham Lincoln.