GET OUT: US politics November 2020

In [Niebuhr’s] view, the price of liberty isn’t merely eternal vigilance; it’s also eternal trial and error. New solutions create new problems. Virtues in one situation become vices in another. Measures to suppress abuses of freedom can end up suppressing freedom. Reason advances justice in some circumstances and camouflages injustice in others. The expansion of knowledge sometimes fuels global understanding and other times fuels imperialism. A free society, Niebuhr believed, demands ceaseless recalibration of unity and diversity, freedom and order, mores and mandates, state power and corporate power. The challenge is “a perpetual one,” he told Luce, “for which no single solution is ever found but upon which each generation must work afresh.”

I'm volunteering at a food pantry today. Some work is never done no matter who wins the White House.

Props to Steve Kornacki, who has been on TV for 2 days straight

Based on the NYT reported numbers by county in GA, I think Biden wins GA by 100,000 votes if all votes are counted. He’s down by 100,000 currently, but the outstanding votes are largely in Democratic counties.

Even NC seems ... too close to call? As 538 posted just now:

Trump is at 50 percent compared with 49 percent for Biden, with around 95 percent of North Carolina’s vote in, according to ABC News projections. One reason it’s hard to declare a winner here is that about 6 percent of the vote is uncounted in Wake County (the Raleigh area) and about 5 percent uncounted in Mecklenburg County (the Charlotte area.) Those are the two largest counties in the state, and Biden is winning Mecklenburg by around 35 percentage points and Wake by about 26 percentage points. So Biden could close Trump’s margin as more votes come in from those two counties. There are some votes left in more Trump-leaning areas in the state, but none of them in counties nearly as large as Mecklenburg or Wake.

So, even if Biden wins, Trump is actually more popular now than he was four years ago? OK, that, er, makes perfect sense.

Apologies, I'm trying very hard to keep out of this thread.

State Democratic Party chair

Green Bay and Kenosha results are in. Biden is now up in Wisconsin by roughly 20,600 votes. That number could wobble a bit, but there's no realistic path for Trump to pull ahead.

Biden has won more votes any prez candidate in WI history.

Folks: Joe Biden just won Wisconsin. https://t.co/xtg0hiSlW4

— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) November 4, 2020

I'm volunteering at a food pantry today. Some work is never done no matter who wins the White House.

It might be done one day if the Dems stop nominating right wing douchebags

It’s just the panic vote. Not enough to overcome the “enough of this shit” vote.

xxxp

So if I read my timeline right, your understanding of the state of American democracy depends on when/if you went to bed last night. I’m a three o clockist.

— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) November 4, 2020

I went to bed after Biden’s speech but before the authoritarian attempt

xps damn, twitter slapped a warning on Wikler.

AP Decision Desk on North Carolina:

“Though Trump is correct that he held a 76,000-vote lead in the state early Wednesday, the race is too close to call and there are still about 200,000 mail-in ballots left to count. /1

— Emma Kinery (@EmmaKinery) November 4, 2020

I went to sleep after watching Trump’s speech and dreamt of red and blue percentage values

I went to sleep at, like, 9:30.

xps damn, twitter slapped a warning on Wikler.

Just being cautious, I don't think that represents any special knowledge on Twitter's part.

i dreamed I was Biden's ambassador and I was having sex with the vote counters of several states to get them to influence the vote.

the having sex part is how i knew it was a dream

xpost yeah it's an appropriate tag. a partisan call of Wisconsin that doesn't represent an official 'call'.

True Nor do "calls" by AP, Fox etc, though.

Yeah you can’t call Wisconsin yet but he’s right. The outstanding vote will not be Trump friendly.

So there's not a path to a Democratic Senate at this point, huh. Even if mail-in votes tip Michigan and N.C., the former of which seems more likely than the latter, that's as far as they get?

I expected Wisconsin to be a blowout because we’re getting slammed hard with Covid pretty much everywhere. The very obvious thing I missed is that we’re getting slammed with Covid because we have so many Trump voters.

xxxpost right, but there's a diff between an officially recognized network calling a network vs someone who is a member of the party saying "we won". I get why they're doing that.

xposts

Oh, I guess Georgia. Wow, those Georgia run-offs are going to be something if the majority rides on them.

exactly. All eyes will be on Georgia for the Senate majority

Numbers numbers numbers via Elections Project:

I posted PRELIMINARY estimates of the 2020 state and national turnout and voting-eligible population turnout rates

160 million people voted

Turnout rate: 66.9%

Highest turnout rate since 1900: 73.7%https://t.co/k7y6bGRInG

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) November 4, 2020

Nate Cohn:

Joe Biden has won absentee ballots counted in Pennsylvania by an overwhelming margin so far, according to data from the Secretary of State early Wednesday. If he carried the remaining absentee ballots by a similar margin, he would win the state.

The Warnock vs Loeffler runoff is going to be a spectacle

looks like if Biden squeaks Michigan ( and the others he's fav to take) he's on 271 points by my ignorant, presumptuous UK maths. Just heard someone saying he's the fav to take it because of postal votes.

Eh, I messed up the numbers. Georgia not a sure thing but it will be extremely close.

Collins will bend the knee and endorse Loeffler quickly enough I’m sure but it is satisfying watching his Trump whisperer dreams blow up.

prop 22 likely to pass, horrible

What makes you say that? Polls are still open and ballots will not be counted for weeks.

it did end up passing, by a lot, and it did not take weeks

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/03/uber-prop22-results-california/

Biden’s math looking better by the minute.

So there's not a path to a Democratic Senate at this point, huh. Even if mail-in votes tip Michigan and N.C., the former of which seems more likely than the latter, that's as far as they get?

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, November 4, 2020 8:48 AM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

still curious about collins, but she's at over 50% with 85% of votes counted.

Saw that Biden pulled ahead in Michigan? Anyone else see that anywhere?

Yep

Yep seeing that on CNN rn

Michigan looking good

I drifted off at 3:00 thinking one thing, thought something else when I checked at 6:00, changed again driving in to work. I can only check intermittently during the day. Help me out: Biden's chances of winning now stand at approximately _____ %.

Should we expect the victory to be called for Biden soon?

I feel like I've at least educated 5 of my friends that you can't treat votes like a baseball game and go "oh so and so's *winning*, this is bad" or "so and so is losing, this is great".

literally watched one of my friends oscilatting between "Oh cool Montana's blue, we might win it this year" and "Oh fuck it's red now, WHAT HAPPENED?"

xpost no. it's gonna be a 'likely' thing but not called.

.1 % ahead in Michigan and 89% of votes counted, but apparently these are the postal votes which skew heavily towards Dems.

probably Friday would be the earliest we'll hear a 'call'?

Trump’s campaign in both 2016 and 2020 did some smart micro targeting of black and Hispanic voters who were socially conservative and/or economically moderate and/or pro police. I think the democrats took those votes for granted and assumed “he’s racist” was enough. If you want to know why we aren’t doing better than we are (eg we should have the senate right now) that’s one place to look.

Hard to imagine that idiots want fewer labor protections and benefits, but I guess the propaganda campaign by Uber et al really worked re: Prop 22.

btw the current narrative among Trumpers = voting precincts are "stopping the count" when Trump gets close.

they really are this stupid. they've been spreading false rumors that the cuont stopped in Philly even as those poor employees worked all night.

And just like that Biden has overtaken Trump in Michigan by 25,000 votes with most of the remaining votes likely to be favorable to Biden.

It's really hard to see how Trump wins reelection at this point.

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) November 4, 2020